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As far as I can remember it's always been this way: very low barrier to entry. All you have to do is make an account to ask and answer questions.

I don't know why you had a hard time posting. Maybe you're thinking of commenting?

The counter is ExpertsExchange: very difficult to do both.

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No idea, but I was just trying to answer some questions. I remember vaguely that I needed some points to help and I needed to help to get the points, so... I shrugged and let it be.

If a question is very popular, a lot of people think it's like a normal forum and post “me too” answers. (Or, at least, they used to, before everyone knew Stack Overflow.) So there's a mechanism to “protect” questions so you need at least 10 rep (on that site – the “you contributed lots on another site so probably aren't a spammer” bonus doesn't count) before you can answer.

Very few questions are protected.

The first post on SO for most accounts tend to be from Newbs. The people see the question and think Read The Fucking Manual and downvote. Then you have zero karma and you can't do anything else.

The problem is that the Newb doesn't even know where to start in the manual.

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