It's kind of baffling to me that SO hasn't made further significant attempts at improving the site's culture after identifying and documenting the problems over a year ago in their blog posts. I agree that nothing much has changed on the site since then.
The pattern I see nowadays is that someone asks a reasonable (albeit basic) question and, even if it's not downvoted, people start immediately attempting to undermine it in the comments. Many people's goal seems not to be to answer the question (whatever the question may be) but to explain why the question is invalid and shouldn't have been asked in the first place. In my experience the top reputation users are not the problem either -- they are actually more likely to answer the question as asked and not simply try to undermine the questioners.
Over a year ago? It's been this way for at least 5 years and probably more. And it was a well-known fact.
However! Remember that the primary goal of SO is not to answer your individual question, but to curate a collection of publicly-useful Q&A. That's why it's reasonable to "undermine" many newbie question. The trick is to do it in a way that's positive, friendly, and condusive to the asker getting an answer to what they want to know.
The pattern I see nowadays is that someone asks a reasonable (albeit basic) question and, even if it's not downvoted, people start immediately attempting to undermine it in the comments. Many people's goal seems not to be to answer the question (whatever the question may be) but to explain why the question is invalid and shouldn't have been asked in the first place. In my experience the top reputation users are not the problem either -- they are actually more likely to answer the question as asked and not simply try to undermine the questioners.