Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

Yes, in that the worlds largest helper only supports simple boring common questions, as per the article. If you're trying to do stats in scala, and the only help you can get is "hello world" in java, that's not good for Scala, statistics, or much of anything else, making the world overall dumber.

By analogy, lets say reality TV shows completely push video documentaries off the air. This is not so far fetched. The net result is likely to be dumber.

In the SO world, I'm definitely a "listener." I almost always wind up on the site from Google, and it usually does a pretty good job. I don't think I've ever navigated around the site itself, so the "game-ification" or whatever was completely foreign.

I will say that there have been numerous times where there are pretty good subjective or opinion based discussions (which language is better for x?) that get "closed as non constructive." I can understand why they would want to avoid flame wars, but almost always the discussions were, ironically, very constructive, nor could I find the same type of discussion anywhere else.

What you reward, you get more of. Therefore the site will move in the direction of point collecting game players.

Doesn't particularly matter what they "should" do, what the site is designed to do, intentionally or otherwise, rightly or wrongly, is what the site will do.

Telling everyone including the people in charge not to do what they are designed to enjoy doing is basically abstinence based sex ed. "Here's something you haven't seen, it's a lot of fun, now don't do it" Good luck with that.

Lets say HN karma points were rewarded on the basis of using the F word in posts. I don't think advising people the moral high ground would be to abstain would clean the place up, if the whole purpose of the design is to encourage it. This might actually be a funny April fools joke to think about...

Yes, and that is an incredibly valuable service.

I haven't participated in StackOverflow actively, neither asking nor answering questions, for various reasons, some perhaps related to some of the OP's complaints, but it has saved me many hours of searching through documentation and mailing lists just by being there.

I suspect the contribution to global programmer productivity is enormous. It's true that it may tend to reduce the amount of very detailed knowledge about very narrow topics that people need to memorize but I think that externalizing this type of knowledge is the way to go. As long as your mental models about the basic workings of the software you're using are essentially correct I don't think there's much harm in depending on external resources for specific details.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: I appreciate Michael's feedback, and he worries about a lot of the same things I do. Moreover, we are incredibly grateful for all he's done over the years - my honest belief is that his contributions (even when they were just fish) helped a ton of people finish a project that may have been what made them LOVE programming. And those people did take the time to learn the fishing techniques underlying those fish, so they could do it better next time.

ON REWARDS: Points aren't the point. Let's be honest. We reward people for helping others with points that essentially convey nothing other than the ability to help in new ways (as you unlock new privileges). No one in their right mind is spending time on the site with the empirical goal of getting points.

The real reason people answer questions is that they like helping people. The points are important, but only insofar as they give you actual feedback on how many people appreciate your effort. The points aren't the reward; they're just a way to measure the real reward people care about: knowing how much of a difference you've made.

So when Michael worries about his points going up even after he's stopped posting, that's the system working. It's not about ensuring the right person is "winning" it's about showing how many people got help.

And he's still helping others today. I respect his decision to leave, but truly think he should be proud of what he's done for the programming community to date. In any case, we're grateful.