I had this problem for years. And then I picked an open source project that uses the same language and tools and started contributing to it. I made some great friends and the mailing list was always live with discussion that was often much broader than the thing we were building. Over the years we also met live on a couple of conferences, had drings/dinners together and it really helped me fill the void of working alone on commercial side.
I do not need to know how many people agree with something to know whether I agree or disagree with it.
There's no need to show upvote points; just order it so I'm more likely to read the things that other people think are worth reading. I can judge it myself without seeing N "this" comments or upvote points beside it.
