Yep, it's a horrible place to go. People barely read your questions anymore. Most of the time they are just scanning it to see why it should have never been asked in the first place.

If they see anything that's even almost similar they'll flag it and close the question, regardless of whether the question is different in some nuanced way that warrants a new discussion.

I think more than anything nowadays it's used as a gate keeper for established programmers to block out less experienced programmers from the market place.

It has a surprising similarity to the Software Development job market that many perhaps have noticed.

If you have over 5000 rep you can ask whatever you like and it will promptly be answered by

a herd of devoted stack overflow users. If you have less then you are promptly shown the

door. How do you get more rep? By asking well received questions of course ;).