It is often quite useless for questions that go beyond the basics. In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that

It is often quite useless for questions that go beyond the basics. In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that incorrectly suggest that the wrong question is being asked, or a moderator rewriting the question to ask something completely irrelevant, or comments that give blatantly wrong information. For any moderately complex question regarding open source software, for instance, you're generally better off asking on the project's mailing list or IRC channel, or even contacting the main developer(s) directly. When dealing with commercial software, you're often better off using whatever support the provider offers, even if it comes at a monetary cost. Some of the more established online communities are also helpful here, especially for older products. Unless the Stack Overflow question/answer page shows up in a search engine's search results, I've not found Stack Overflow to be worth the time and effort to use it.