It was useful and not the wild west as long as a very small group of intelligent and highly motivated individuals moderated it. First and foremost Jeff Atwood

It was useful and not the wild west as long as a very small group of intelligent and highly motivated individuals moderated it. First and foremost Jeff Atwood used to do a lot of moderation himself - not unlike dang on HN. When that stopped, the site (and to some degree its growing number of sister sites) continued on its ballistic curve, slowly but continuously descending into the abyss. My primary take away is that we have not found a way to scale moderation. SO was doomed anyway, LLMs have just sped up that process.