When I read the bit about creating friendlier and more welcoming site a huge involuntary sigh came out. I can’t express how sad I am that the company persists in believing that their woes are about friendliness of the existing community and not about how inhumane the Stack Overflow design becomes when you try to scale it up to millions of people.
There’s no such thing as a human community of a hundred thousand people. We do best when we interact in smaller groups and federate those groups into a larger organization. I bet if you look at the new user experience at one of the smaller (but still active) sites, it would be relatively good compared to SO, and it wouldn’t have problems with ChatGPT posts.
When people want to become part of a community, they try to learn an adopt community norms. When they’re trying to win points or get attention, they can be disruptive. I tried participating on SO. It feels impossible to become part of the community there unless you have built a reputation on a smaller site on the network.