But Stack Overflow has a consistent problem with interesting questions getting deleted by fascist moderators, and it seems to only be good for Questions and Answers. It’s not a place to pontificate about fibromyalgia, for instance.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. SO was designed and restricted for a Q&A format; it deliberately omits features like comment trees. Its creators believe that it succeeded because it was restricted, since a more specific problem is easier to solve. They’ve gone on to try and solve the more general discussion forum “problem” with Discourse, but it’s still very lean on features—because it’s explicitly designed for mobile touch interfaces and for reading over writing.
Personally, I’m not convinced that SO—as a community—couldn’t have succeeded just as well, or better, with quite different software features. But that’s what they believe.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. SO was designed and restricted for a Q&A format; it deliberately omits features like comment trees. Its creators believe that it succeeded because it was restricted, since a more specific problem is easier to solve. They’ve gone on to try and solve the more general discussion forum “problem” with Discourse, but it’s still very lean on features—because it’s explicitly designed for mobile touch interfaces and for reading over writing.
Personally, I’m not convinced that SO—as a community—couldn’t have succeeded just as well, or better, with quite different software features. But that’s what they believe.