The thing that drove me out was uninteresting questions. I wanted an advanced search that filtered questions by minimum asker reputation, but the only operator available filters by maximum asker reputation (i.e. to find newbies).
I then asked for the feature on meta.stackoverflow.com, and folks there perceived I was being elitist and downvoted me to oblivion. So I left.
I agree. SO has advanced search capabilities, but you have to be an uber power user and know all the esoteric switches, which I think is by design, so fanboys can be "leet". There is this page: http://stackoverflow.com/search (which isn't linked from the homepage), but why don't they take the 4 hours to build an advanced search form so people who aren't frickin experts on the SO platform can do advanced searches? I think this is by design.
>I then asked for the feature on meta.stackoverflow.com, and folks there perceived I was being elitist and downvoted me to oblivion. So I left.
Meta is not a particularly friendly place, and this seems to be the only place that Jeff takes guidance from, but I think it has to a certain degree become ineffective as the people that rule meta are super-uber SO users, and it it is a very homogeneous group of users, so genuinely new ideas basically can't enter. Maybe they could, but after the initial rude reception you get with a new idea, most people just can't be arsed and leave, as you did.
I then asked for the feature on meta.stackoverflow.com, and folks there perceived I was being elitist and downvoted me to oblivion. So I left.