I was an early adopter of Stack Overflow. I was also an early leaver of Stack Overflow. That was because the site seemed to cater to elitist anwerers and modera

I was an early adopter of Stack Overflow. I was also an early leaver of Stack Overflow. That was because the site seemed to cater to elitist anwerers and moderators than to the people asking the questions. All too often the answer to a question was :"this question doesn't suit our website" or "this question has been answered before" or "this question is below our prestige level". If the system was smart enough to answer that a question had been answered before, it should have been smart enough to merge the current question with the old question, or at a minimum, to just link the current question to the older question's answers. If a question wasn't relevant to the website, then a blanket 'offshoring' of the question to something like 'Let me Google that for you' would be better than a plain blank wall. As nicolas_t said above, "I always feel a bit sad and wistful when thinking about Stack Overflow. It was a great idea and at the beginning it worked well but the moderation culture destroyed the site.". My sentiments exactly.