When the number one result in Google is a site answering my exact question with "did you try googling it first?" I have no incentive to interact with that site.

Never. IIRC, I also couldn't upvote good solutions because I had never posted or something, though I may be mis-remembering.

I've never asked a question there. Typically if there's no quick answer to my question already available, I'll just dig through documentation.

Funny story: when SO first started, started answering questions in domains I had experience in. The gamification was fun. After a year, questions got repetitive, so stopped.

A few years later. Googling a tech question. Top answer. Checked. Looks good.

Scroll down. It's my own answer from way back when.

First time I felt old.

Never. Don't have the patience to gather enough points to ask a question.

Oh, and,

Most of the responses on that site are toxic, so I tend to avoid it.

Never. For the most part i haven't had a question that hasn't already asked or that couldn't be answered from reading the docs or some other source. For the cases i get stuck i ask the question to a more focused group

I asked and answered a small handful of questions in the mid 20-teens but not really much since. I still wind up finding good answers there on a semi regular basis, though.

I just looked in my profile and my last question was in 2017. I received a holier than thou “what you’re trying to do is wrong” type of response and finally solved it with the help of a coworker who actually cared.

I find SO too pissy to interact with. If I find something useful there, I'll copy it, but otherwise I ignore it.

Last time I asked was in 2019. I've asked 30+ questions total, only about half of those are ever answered. I've found that, the more experienced I get, the less my questions get answered on SO. Usually because my questions are well thought out, explained incredibly well, and the problem isn't that I don't understand something. It's that my problem is one of a kind. E.g. no one else on the planet is having it. So of course I'm not going to get help for it.

Never, end up there a lot when googling though.

I haven’t asked that much on SO. Often I can find the answer myself. In other cases my question is so niche I don’t know how to formulate it into a good SO question.

One of my questions got closed for being duplicate because it was tangentially related to a different question. I got the answer, but it left me a sour taste.

I think I've asked only two or three questions there, ever, and those were on topics obscure enough that the answers ended up coming from me.

There was a time when I answered other people pretty regularly, but that was more than a few years ago. I stopped mainly because I'm not very comfortable giving them free labour so they can be the gatekeepers of community knowledge.

I wonder if anyone is working on a fediverse Q&A platform.

I forgot that last time was in 2023, although the previous one was in 2016. SO had a lot of moderation drama and point-grinders that (imo) led to community becoming more toxic, to the point where it's not too pleasant for me to participate in.

To be fair, they still have some good answers, and sometimes they can provide a useful answer, but edge-case rare obscure problems that seemed to be the very reason for SO are rarely answered now, as I see it

You should already know that. It’s such a simple thing. — first answer on StackOverflow

Never asked one. Answered my first one recently.

Sometime between 2013 and 2018. Had to answer it myself. It got at least a couple dozen upvotes and a lot of people finding it useful and asking follow up questions.

It's deleted now. To be fair it was probably really outdated. But my account seems to be completely gone now. Maybe it got hacked. I haven't been there in a long time.

It must have been over 5 years ago. It turned me off. The culture there was so painful. People would refuse to answer a question just because they deemed the premise of your question unacceptable. Or even recommend you change your whole project's language.

It was like that both in questions and in chat. I never tried again.

Last time I wrote a question - probably a couple of months ago. Last time I posted a question .... aaaaages ago.

By the time I get sufficiently frustrated to contemplate asking a question, I find the clarity that comes from stopping and trying to clearly lay out a question usually results in my figuring it out just before I hit post.

Was somewhat active in the travel section, but left since 90% are now visa questions on how to get into the schengen area.

Very rarely, but if it's a specific enough question that I've actually researched before I usually get a good response.

I find I ask less questions now because I'm a better programmer and just visit the site less in general. I used to ask a lot. I actually don't find that many duplicates though, usually when I have a question there isn't already an answer... usually because when I have a question I'm doing something insane, I find I do that a lot lol.

I asked 6 questions on StackOverflow. 3 in 2010 and 3 in 2011.

For context; I gave 183 answers.

I can agree with most questions having already been asked.

Moreso, most questions on StackOverflow can be answered with some context knowledge or some reading of official docs or references, or trying out. I've not felt the need to ask anything.

I almost exclusively use ai now. Customized responses, no ‘google it’ responses, no ads.

A bunch of people that either failed to understand the value of the moderation system or are just crybabies about being expected to follow the rules answering here.

It is easy to use and not nearly as toxic as most of the internet will claim. Research your question, ask clearly, include the code you attempted for a minimal reproduction, and include debugging details. If you don’t do those things, you are the problem, not the people closing your questions.

I use it often per month.