There is an endless supply of new users who need to learn, but only limited patience among senior people to repeat themselves. The "safeguards" put in place against repetition, n00bs, decay, etc, really serve the interests of the users who have stuck around, not the users who need to learn something. Newer users talking about getting a different experience than the original users, and not getting the usefulness that the site's reputation implies, is not simple whining.

Any solution has to have the support of the long-term, high-rep community, but the long-term, high-rep community creates the problem - by sticking around so long, they accumulate influence even as their incentives changed. You can see why meta might have a lot of people who don't think there's a problem at all.

The senior-friendly design of SO ignores the fact that the graveyards are full of indispensible people. One huge change would simply be to age out the users who have been around the longest, or have the highest rep. The newest can (and should) be taught by the slightly-more-experienced who aren't yet jaded by the repetition.