Right, SO was always better at answering beginner questions then advanced ones, except if the complex question had a broad appeal. Part of it is because the format is not good for asking a context-heavy question. Another part because you were dependent on the pool of people answering, and the more niched the question was (using a library not very popular, for instance) or the more expertise it required, the less likely you were to find someone.

Back then library and framework authors were also less competitive. Now open source authors do the full court press with very beautiful docs for both humans and agents.