I had an idea for a stackexchange site a while ago - but did not take the time to go and make it. Upon seeing this, I thought "hooray, now I can see if it holds any merit!"
So I went to the site. First thing's first: I want to search to see if my idea has been done. There's the search box! My idea is essentially teach people how to learn things (as in, what order to learn what topics and how to learn those subtopics best) in a wiki-tized fashion. So I type 'how to' in the search box and hit enter.
Nothing happens.
So I click the magnifying glass to the left of the box...
Nothing happens.
Unfazed, I decide it must be because I'm not logged in. I trundle to the create account page, login with my OpenID, and see I'm 'User3840'. Best be changing that!
I click on my name and get taken to a profile page where I can click edit. I do so, and fill out the form with my real life information, because I like being a human to the people I meet on the internet. I change my name to 'wcarss', and:
Oops! There was a problem updating your profile: * unusual error updating your profile -- please try again!
So I do. Same error. Okay... So I decide to remain anonymous and just search for my idea again. As a good user, I should make sure there's no duplicates!
Still doesn't work at all.
Okay, so it's buggy. I'm a bit unhappy now but I know what to do: submit a bug report. At the bottom of the page is a friendly link, 'feedback always welcome', so I click it and travel to meta.stackoverflow.com
I make a new account here after registering my OpenID. It seems strange that I now have two separate accounts (User148067 on meta and User3840 on area51) despite having one OpenID associated with both and both running from the same group of people, but hey it's okay.
I go to post feedback, and leave my browser version, os, repro steps, helpful tags, and the urls I had failed search on. Hit 'Post Your Question' - uh oh!
Oops! Your question couldn't be submitted because: * we're sorry, but as a spam prevention mechanism, new users can only post a maximum of one hyperlink. Earn 10 reputation to post more hyperlinks. * users with less than 99 reputation can't create new tags. The tags 'fail issue' are new. Try using existing tags instead.
I'm now infuriated; so I came here to post what's happened so far. I'm going to remove all of my tags because I have /no idea/ what tags already exist, and I'm going to make my url's not clickable. I am forced into being less helpful.
Finally, I've posted something! Now if anyone sees it and responds, I'll know why the site is broken for me. I can't change my name on meta either. As a user that just wanted to participate and to be a good community member, I've been left soured to the entire StackOverflow experience.