I used to contribute a ton to Stack Overflow at the beginning in 2009 and 2010 and then stopped cold turkey. One of the senior product execs emailed me to see what turned me off.

What killed it for me was community moderation. People who cannot contribute with quality content will attempt to contribute by improperly and excessively applying their opinion of what is allowed.

Unfortunately it happens to every online technical community once they become popular enough. I even see it happening on HN.

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gn4d 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Fellow OG! And it's been happening on HN since the mid-2010s, too. Moderation went out of control everywhere, but at least this site isn't branded as some strictly technical site. Can't believe I'm even saying this, but moderation on a site that encompasses a cornucopia of topics is their prerogative. The mind-boggling thing to me about SO was that the moderation used non-technical criteria (such as failing to recognize why certain problems were asked and were not dupes, and later to shoehorn in political and sexual ideologies) to shape a technical site.

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throw-12-16 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

HN is a sponsored marketing outlet for YC first and foremost.

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austin-cheney 4 days ago | parent [-]

HN has full time staff that provides moderation and does an excellent job. Nonetheless there are numerous users who take it upon themselves to determine what content should be available to the rest of us, as if they were heroes in their own mind.

It’s a form of narcissism. While they think of themselves as community saviors everyone else thinks they are censoring assholes. Just let the moderators do their job. Unwanted content will naturally fall off either by downvoting or it will be ignored.

All the rest of ask for is just don’t be an asshole.

	▲	throw-12-16 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		That has nothing to do with the fact that this forum exists to promote YC and its associated ventures.