It's difficult for newcomers to get their answers accepted there, or their questions not closed/merged with irrelevant ones. As a result, the new contributors the site needs to stay relevant are not sticking around, and not replacing anyone who moves on.
And that's something just about every site and community and social media platform has to deal with. People don't stick around forever, and you can't rely on the same old people who've been there for the last decade to keep things going for the next two. So you need new users to get involved and become active, and for that you need a community that's somewhat welcoming to them and their efforts.
Feels like Wikipedia is going down a similar path to StackOverflow as well.
I've noticed that many of my searches now show several other websites before they show Wikipedia. If I'm not mistaken, search engines bury Wikipedia more than they used to.
And that's something just about every site and community and social media platform has to deal with. People don't stick around forever, and you can't rely on the same old people who've been there for the last decade to keep things going for the next two. So you need new users to get involved and become active, and for that you need a community that's somewhat welcoming to them and their efforts.
Feels like Wikipedia is going down a similar path to StackOverflow as well.