SO jumped the shark for me when its scope shifted hard from the original goals. I remember the original seedling goals that Spolsky posted; for example, a question is likely inappropriate for SO if its answer couldn't involve code. That got lost awful fast.
Oh, and remember how it was going to be all Wikipedia of programming, where really good answers would be zipped together so that SO became the defacto good-idea repository? And could evolve over time? Such a good idea. Never materialized.
Proper props for putting in the effort. Better than e-e. Usually, though definitely not always, better than isolated boards. But now we're in a good-enemy-of-best world where I still want some site or system addressing the original problems, but SO is so dominant I don't see how it could germinate.
SO has definitely out-stripped what came before. They were generation 1 and had gen-1 problems.
SO is generation 2, better than generation 1. But it's having gen-2 problems. I think a lot of it is because they are so proud of having fixed the gen-1 problems that they refuse to see their gen-2 problems.
Oh, and remember how it was going to be all Wikipedia of programming, where really good answers would be zipped together so that SO became the defacto good-idea repository? And could evolve over time? Such a good idea. Never materialized.
Proper props for putting in the effort. Better than e-e. Usually, though definitely not always, better than isolated boards. But now we're in a good-enemy-of-best world where I still want some site or system addressing the original problems, but SO is so dominant I don't see how it could germinate.