Stack Overflow is a site of passers-by [closed]

Question

They says that Stack Overflow is a community-driven web-site.
But, as a matter of fact, it is not.

There is no community at all. It's more like an imageboard, as a number of participants makes them pretty much like anonymous to each other despite of registration.

Stack Overflow is a site of passers-by.

Passers-by who want to solve their silly typo problem and passers-by who eager to share their vast knowledge in spotting silly typos. And - oh - sometimes to perform a civic duty and vote to close a question they have no idea what to answer to and thus calling it "not a real question".

So, as a funny consequence, whatever question can get

• answered
• upvoted
• downvoted
• closed
• deleted

depends not on its quality but only on the fluctuation happened to "community" at the given moment, at a pretty random rate.

It is not only quite discouraging. It makes the very idea of collecting and improving knowledge quite impossible.

Answer 1

They says that Stack Overflow is a community-driven web-site.
But, as a matter of fact, it is not.

That may be your opinion, but it isn't a fact. I would disagree and say that the community that drives Stack Overflow are the people who participate here on Meta.

Stack Overflow is a site of passers-by.

Mostly, yes. The vast majority of questions on Stack Overflow are by people who just have a problem that they need help solving.

Passers-by who want to solve their silly typo problem and passers-by who eager to share their vast knowledge in spotting silly typos.

We have a close reason for that. Too localized. The community closes and deletes silly typo questions every day.

And - oh - sometimes to perform a civic duty and vote to close a question they have no idea what to answer to and thus calling it "not a real question".

You can appeal to the community here on Meta to get a closure reversed. That also happens quite frequently.

It is not only quite discouraging. It makes the very idea of collecting and improving knowledge quite impossible.

You seem to think that if something doesn't work 100% of the time, it doesn't work at all. That doesn't sound like "common sense" to me, it sounds like a logical fallacy.

Answer 2

They says that Stack Overflow is a community-driven web-site.
But, as a matter of fact, it is not.

Stack Overflow has a very strong community. Taking a look at the reputation leagues alone will give you a list of thousands of users with a reputation so high that they could not have possible gained it as a passer by (barring one or two exceptions)

The majority of users only come by a few times, and leave once their question has been answered. This is a fact, but it does not mean there is no community.

Passers-by who want to solve their silly typo problem and passers-by who eager to share their vast knowledge in spotting silly typos.

Questions like this are frequently closed and deleted. There is an excellent Meta discussion on it here.

sometimes to perform a civic duty and vote to close a question they have no idea what to answer to and thus calling it "not a real question".

Closing is only done by users with 3k+ reputation, and in most cases they are right. If you feel an error has been made, you can freely take it up on Meta and it will almost definitely be reversed if an error was made. This has happened before, and will happen again if required.

Additionally, if it was only a site of passer bys, how do you think questions are being closed? Passer bys rarely have enough reputation to perform such actions.

It is not only quite discouraging. It makes the very idea of collecting and improving knowledge quite impossible.

Knowledge can come from anywhere, whether it be a user who drops by for five minutes or one who's been here since the site's creation. The current model works pretty well for Stack Overflow, and we have amassed an impressive amount of knowledge here (4million+ questions on thousands of topics)