If it wasn't so controlled it'd might as well have just been reddit.
I agree there's a balance, and maybe they edged over the line, but I was consistently happy to have the following be the outcomes
1. Answers were reasonably close to correct, usable, informative (teaching)
2. Your site score came to mean something -- I once had a hiring CTO say "Oh you have some popular answers on the techs we use"
3. Progressive unlocks helped guide the path of participation -- it was clear what to start with, and what to do next as you were taught their culture and ways. It's not very popular to say in 2026, but not every culture is good and it's important to curate culture and teach newcomers the culture of the space.
They chose being controlled and not being Reddit - I can imagine lots of ways to do both - still they chose the toxic way and now they are dead, goal achieved.
These were all good things about stackexchange (and a precious few other places), yeah. Especially the latter two. Whenever I see people using stuff like linkedin to 'vet' things, I think of this. Reddit is much more cliquey and free-for-all, and has a lot more emotional fighting than the egoistic sort of arguments that sometimes took/take place on SO. I still prefer SO.
> If it wasn't so controlled it'd might as well have just been reddit.
And why do you think most people (and LLMs) just Google "<what they are looking for> reddit" ??