Absolutely unquestionably, the universe is high style. And what are we?

The Information, Martin Amis

Is there any measure of a fool I fail to meet?

Ser Duncan the Tall

I am deeply average - some might say mediocre at best. Average height, weight and shoe size. Average tech skills; average communications competence; average team player.

I came late to Stack Overflow. Many were already saying that its glory days were in the past when I started contributing six years ago. Since I arrived, it’s been downhill all the way (hold on, though - correlation does not imply causation).

If there was a gold badge for “making all the mistakes”, I would probably have earned it by now.

I’ve received the occasional vitriolic ad hominem attack along the way (especially in my early days) - including from one extremely high profile member of the community; they do say you should never meet your heroes. But overwhelmingly I (along with countless others) have received amazing and patient help, encouragement and insights from the sharpest, most articulate minds I have ever had the privilege to interact with.

A couple of months ago I decided to log out of Stack Overflow. It’s unlikely that I will ever log in again, or contribute in any way. It had become an increasingly wretched experience, trying to keep my tiny corner of the site a bit cleaner than how I found it, day-after-day. With all the recent changes (especially with how the potentially excellent idea of open-ended questions/content was implemented so horribly), any further effort seemed futile.

It’s possible, I suppose, that this is exactly what the company running the site wants from the army of low-profile community members who have been toiling away on all those never-ending unanswerable questions and “not an answer” answers.

(An actual screenshot, by the way, not a mock-up.)

Maybe those running Stack Exchange Inc. (warning: nsfw?) want us gone. I certainly don’t take it personally. They have a business to run, and investors to answer to. That is far more workplace responsibility than I have ever had. I don’t envy them their seemingly impossible task.

This has been a powerful lesson for me about sunk costs and the fallacies which prevented me from stopping sooner. I feel a bit foolish, to be honest.

On the other hand, a deeply surprising thing happened when I logged off that last time: I felt a powerful sense of relief.

To those who are still hanging on in the wake of the most recent nonsense: I thank you all - especially those diamond moderators who have tried (and are still trying) to keep the site alive and true to its original goals. The torch is not yet entirely extinguished.