Actually, talking to ChatGpt, I found this article: “Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming. It’s Time for That to Change.” ( https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve...) and that actually shows what the SO admins didn't get (imo obviously).
They thought the problem was people not being nice. But that actual problem was that SO was "gamified" and it's gamified interface made it impossible to win unless someone was ultra-competitive (and I'd those types burned-out over time as well). People not being nice was real but it was side-effect of the situation (questions answered instantly so a would-be question answered had to be constantly racing).
It's easy to imagine how the admins didn't see the situation. Each up of intensity seemed to up the engagement and so seemed a good thing. The question of whether the process was sustainable didn't appear and when there were problems it was attributed to something else.
I think
[–] cowlevel 14 hours ago
[–] braiamp 12 hours ago
There's zero reward for closing a question. I know that because I casted 2 thousands of those, no reward ever came my way.
> The honeypots in the review queue trained you to err on the side of closing questions
That's also false, there were as many for either side in the audit queue. There's a whole list of post about people complaining[1]. Most of the time, the answer is the same: if you are not sure, hit skip.
For most the negatives audits, SO famously used spam rather than bad posts (which also taught the wrong lesson)
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bdisputed-review-a...
[–] joe_the_user 13 hours ago
Question-closing was a big complaint through-out SO's history. My guess is that the top people were unconcerned because someone who complained about it was by the way the system defined people, a bad user (since they were lumped-in with those who really did ask already answered questions).
Even though you didn't get a reputation score for that specific action as I remember, it still gave you the little "I'm helping" feeling.
The honeypots in the review queue trained you to err on the side of closing questions - you were punished for not closing a honeypot when other people had closed it, regardless of whether it actually deserved to be closed. Complaints about incorrect honeypots were frequent and the system was not improved.