I'm also both an answerer and asker on SO, and I've been using the site off and on almost since the beginning. The larger issue for me (and what is just touched on in this article) is the change in character of SO as its grown over time.
In the beginning I found a number of open and interesting questions (occasionally some of these were closed as being too opinion-based or broad, which bugged me a bit as they were some of the most interesting and illuminating (granted, you could argue that that is not the intention of SO. Still, having an interesting conversation closed seemed, at the very least, excessively pedantic).
The larger issue, I think, is that most open questions now are either of the "How do I do obscure thing X in framework Y under rare condition Z" variety, or beginner "Please do my homework" or "I have a bunch of things in my array it's not printing" sorts of questions.
Not sure what the right answer is for this. And, even so, I often get good responses when I post.
> The larger issue, I think, is that most open questions now are either of the "How do I do obscure thing X in framework Y under rare condition Z" variety, or beginner "Please do my homework" or "I have a bunch of things in my array it's not printing" sorts of questions.
I think it's due to the fact that the questions "in the middle" are already answered and people find them through searching. No need to and again. Only beginners (that can't search effectively) post on SO or people having rare edge cases (for which asking in SO is a last resort).
In the beginning I found a number of open and interesting questions (occasionally some of these were closed as being too opinion-based or broad, which bugged me a bit as they were some of the most interesting and illuminating (granted, you could argue that that is not the intention of SO. Still, having an interesting conversation closed seemed, at the very least, excessively pedantic).
The larger issue, I think, is that most open questions now are either of the "How do I do obscure thing X in framework Y under rare condition Z" variety, or beginner "Please do my homework" or "I have a bunch of things in my array it's not printing" sorts of questions.
Not sure what the right answer is for this. And, even so, I often get good responses when I post.