I had a deep liking for stack overflow some 12 years ago and went really crazy, spending hours every week answering questions much the same way Gregg describes.

I had a deep liking for stack overflow some 12 years ago and went really crazy, spending hours every week answering questions much the same way Gregg describes. It was almost like a fun game - I loved finding something hard to answer then trying to get a good answer in there to a) teach myself in the process and b) help someone out. I was well rewarded with internet points which was somewhat appealing at the time. But that got old pretty quickly. What got old even faster was how cold and unkind other users could be. Over time I noticed I would always be second or later in answering questions; people would hurriedly toss up something hoping for that green check mark, and their answers would be pretty mediocre in most cases. However, speed was key and my answers would end up passed over. I continued doing it for a while because I enjoyed the exercise of it, but watching the overall quality of the site decline so rapidly absolutely killed it for me. I lasted around 2 years in total, maybe 6 months of that spent as a very active user. These days I actually filter it from my search results, like medium, many git repository mirrors, and content-farmy sites which hit on all major popular topics with the thinnest and least professional content possible.