I'm quote familiar with that post, the linked questions and comments are often quite interesting to read as a bit of social commentary. On large communities decaying over time, being nice or mean, and Stack Overflow ( https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/256003/ ) is another read that I would suggest about the social dynamics there.

Much of this has to do with a conflict between two visions of what Stack Overflow should be. Elsewhere (private slack channel post), I've mused about those visions:

++ The Atwoodians

Those who are drawn to the site by the original call for the site ( https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ )

> It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.

There is a word in italics there - its in the original. It is about good programing knowlege. Not all programming knowlege. It is about high standards and quality. This presents a higher barrier to entry and some degree of eliteism. It is also a vision of what the site can be.

Close and delete questions that aren't good. Delete answers that aren't good - especially if they make it harder to find information.

++ The Spolskyians

The Spolsky vision differed a bit, and it is hinted at in Joel's launch anoucement. ( https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/09/15/stack-overflow-lau... )

> In addition to voting on answers, you can vote on questions. Vote up a question if you think it’s interesting, if you’d like to know the answer, or if you think it’s important.

> ...

> What kind of questions are appropriate? Well, thanks to the tagging system, we can be rather broad with that. As long as questions are appropriately tagged, I think it’s okay to be off topic as long as what you’re asking about is of interest to people who make software. But it does have to be a question. Stack Overflow isn’t a good place for imponderables, or public service announcements, or vague complaints, or storytelling.

Things that are interesting and helpful to someone. The annoucement encourages polls and questions with dozens of answers (the example being favorite keyboard shortchut in emacs). This is a different vision than the Atwoodians subscribe to and there are occasional debates to be seen on meta between people with these different visions.

Hot network questions that bring in more things that are interesting are wonderful. And they upvote interesting things to make it easier to find them too. In general, deleting posts should be avoided because it might be interesting or helpful to someone.

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These two visions of what the site should be play out, and new users who aren't aware of the background can get confused as one post or another attracts the attention.

There are also people who come to the site with a view that its like facebook and since people like getting a :+1: on facebook, they should get it on Stack Overflow regardless of the material - it makes them happy and its good for people to be happy.

There are people who are using Stack Overflow as a differentiator between their resume and the hundreds of other applicants. Any down vote on their questions or answers impact is seen as impacting their future career prospects.

And then there are the people trying to keep their "develop a clone of facebook" bid that they made on eLance to under $100 costs that they're writing between classes on on the weekend so they have some left over for beer money.