> People who want to give the same easy answers over and over to the same easy questions, so as to get imaginary internet points that move them up a leaderboard, should not feel welcome on Stack Overflow.
I think it's worth asking, why do people give answers on the internet at all? Maybe it's because of internet points, but more often people just like interacting with other humans and teaching.
In the beginning, StackOverflow was a place for people who wanted to interact with other humans, and also a place for people who wanted to build the ultimate knowledge base--for a time their incentives were aligned.
But then over time the space for interacting with other humans got smaller and smaller, and now StackOverflow is almost entirely about maintaining the knowledge base that has been built.
And yeah, like you say, it's okay if StackOverflow isn't the place for human interaction. StackOverflow has built its knowledge base, and some still maintain it, and the long term success of that knowledge base is becoming ever more apparent--which is to say, not very successful--the day may soon come that StackOverflow isn't even hosted anymore.
(Also, I want to ward off the claims that this is because of AI. StackOverflow was in steady decline long before AI was competent at answering questions; even in 2025 the competence of AI is still in question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44000118)
