My problem with Stack Overflow is that it basically feels like a ghost town when I try to use it. The Ember people encourage users to use SO for help, and shut down posts to the Ember discussion board that are too "helpy". But whenever I've asked a question on SO, I've gotten literally zero responses. I have no idea why. Does having a better reputation actually lead to you getting more answers? I don't even know, so I don't bother trying. Many of the things I try to do on SO I can't, because I don't have the right reputation. It mostly feels like an impenetrable, confusing castle full of useful stuff that I can only watch from outside.

Instead, I just blog solutions to various thorny problems I run into, so that other people can find them on Google. And I try to use whatever domain-specific message boards I can find. I just don't understand how to use SO to get help so I don't bother.

And it's not that I don't want to contribute. I've answered some questions on SO and I'd be happy to answer many more than the questions I ask. But my (uninformed) sense is that I could answer questions til I'm blue in the face and no one would ever answer mine. The ratio of unanswered questions to answered ones is insane. It just doesn't feel like there's a community there that I'm joining.

That said, I find it incredibly useful when there's already an SO solution that comes up in Google that solves my problem.