I have not been visiting M.SE very often in the recent months. In the past few days, I looked at what questions are being asked, and it seems really depressing. Is it just that I've forgotten how it was, or did it really get much worse?

It seems like at least half of the questions are of unacceptably low quality, and now merely using a code block counts as effort ...

Is it just me, or is SE really going downhill?

@Szabolcs, I don't think it's just you. In fact, I don't think its even M.SE specific. In general Q&A sites have hit the wall.

My guess is that Mathematica has been getting a bit more popular, so we have a bit more september in the eternal september.

And perhaps also the SE itself became more popular.

@CarlLange That'd be a silver lining for the long-term viability of the language at least

It's unfortunate that we don't know the number of site visitors further back than 2018, but at least since 2018 the number of visitors hasn't changed. The number of new visitors also hasn't changed, and the cyclical pattern is still there as well (we are currently headed for the summer low point).