It’s moderation policies, or maybe just moderators themselves that killed it, this was apparent before AI, but there was no alternative… until suddenly there was.
replyThis. I left SO before AI because moderators were terrible.
replySO collapsed twice - first when everyone stopped contributing, and then AI stopped anyone even reading.
reply> aquire comment points to be able to answer
replyI thought it was the opposite, you need answer points in order to comment (which resulted in people using answers as comments because they had no other option).
The rules changed, a lot.
replyYou created an account one day and the only things you could do were commenting and asking questions; you created it some other day and the only things you could do were asking and answering questions; some other day the only thing you could do was asking questions.
Any day you signed up, asking any question first was a sure way to be downvoted bellow the threshold that would ban you from the site.