https://newsletter.devmoh.co/p/the-fall-of-stack-overflow-explained Stack Overflow can be a useful resource, but yeah, I would not sign up to it.
I always thought of it as a hostile environment (maybe, not in all the same ways as this article), and for what, some internet points? Better off just figuring out a problem yourself.
To be fair to Stack Overflow though, their predecessor (Experts Exchange, their previous competitor) had problems of it's own, from a humorous URL (the least of it's problems) to a huge paywall.
Stack Overflow was successful because it was an easy and free resource.
It wasn't because it was a particularly pleasant site (you never have to deal with that, if enough people have already asked the right questions).
I can see why it's going down. If someone doesn't have to ask questions there, why would they?
It's not as if it's pleasant to navigate the pedantic set of rules, the internet points system (which is where you get the middle finger for giving this site free labor), the incorrectly applied rules, or the bizarre decisions of which questions are worthy of allowing someone to answer.
