This may touch on some points I've already addressed [1] but I have to say something.

I was a frequent contributor to StackOverflow [2] but have largely stopped for a number of reasons, the most important of which is I got a new job that took up much more of my time.

But another reason is that for me, as a (then) frequent answerer, it got a whole lot less interesting. This was due to two factors:

1. A lot of the low-hanging fruit had been answered so the questions became increasingly esoteric such that you were less likely to simply know an answer and had to spend more time researching. That extra time meant you were also less rewarded for the answer because less people were in a position to state that it was correct or not (if you consider karma a "reward"); and

2. The ceaseless campaign against "interesting" questions due to increasing closure due to "subjective and argumentative" and the fragmentation of SO into the many StackExchange sites (causing a lot of questions to be migrated).

There are three basic errors that Joel has (and Jeff had) made (IMHO):

1. Over-emphasis on editing.

In my mind there are three groups: askers, answerers and editors. Jeff & Joel made statements about editors are important and how editing is super-important, basically trying o elevate it to the same level as answering questions.

This is a problem.

Editors are the bureaucrats of the StackOverflow ecosystem. The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy [3]. The more editors you have the less each has to do. Rather than doing less, the kinds of people attracted to this kind of function prefer to simply create work for themselves.

What's more, from Meta StackOverflow, from interacting from the people who edit a lot (and answer very little if anything), this simply reinforced my view: these are the kinds of people who destroy communities.

Those who can, answer. Those who can't, edit.

I've seen many spurious edits to many of my higher voted answers. Some capitalize something. Others come along and uncapitalize it. I've seen people come and add lines to my answers saying I stole it from someone else (seriously).

The net result is virtually any highly voted answer I have has been edited into community wiki oblivion. That creates a strong disincentive for me to spend time coming up with a good answer: I'll basically get limited credit from it and then have to watch as wanna-be editors essentially vandalize it.

The other thing these people do is close questions on the drop of a hat. They, as a group, tend to have an incredibly festidious nature when it comes to the enforcement of rules. They constantly seek some purer, higher standard and don't quite get that those rules are guidelines that are a means to an end and not an end in themselves.

2. "Subjective and argumentative".

Jeff and Joel from the outset wanted to prevent flame war type questions, the kind of questions that have no definite answer. Questions like "Is Ruby better than Python?" That's fine but it's been taken too far, in part by the very editors I previously mentioned.

Questions like "Should I use Angular.js or Ember.js for developing a CRUD-type Web application?" would be shut down in a minute. But the extra context matters. You can answer that question by giving a list of comparative advantages without being necessarily biased or inflammatory. That's actually interesting content, particularly if you're trying to decide between a number of new technologies, languages, etc. But alas SO seems keen on shutting that down; and

3. Fragmentation.

There is another thread today about the difficulty of music classification [4]. The same goes for Q&A. Hierarchical classification schemes are too limited for Q&A. There are SO questions that have bounced around between a number of SE sites for this reason.

Just look at the Stack Exchange sites [5]. If I want to ask a question about being a programmer do I ask on OnStartups, on the Programmer SE or elsewhere?

The pragmatic answer is that there are some question that naturally fit on several sites. Yet the hierarchical pigeon-holing with esoteric and often subjective rules means it's harder to find content, it's hard to find where to place content and newbies inevitably get chastised for posting on the wrong site.

There is a reason tagging exists and is successful. Describe the traits of the question or, better yet, figure it out from the content, and show it when it's relevant to someone. Don't make me hunt across sites for it. That's a ridiculous solution.

I predict you'll see the rise of more tagging-oriented (at a higher level than say Java or C++) and automatic classification Q&A sites in the future.

With that out of my system, let me address som eof the points the OP specifically raised:

> The Eternal September Issue.

This one annoys me. And I don't mean new people. The negative reaction people have to them (eg [6]). When a community starts chastising newbies, that reflects badly on the community, not the newbies.

> Down voting as a means of closing a question.

The one part of downvoting I don't like is people use it as a means of saying "I disagree with this" (on purely subjective grounds), which is not the intended purpose. That problem seems to be nearly universal with voting systems (even here). The one good thing SO does is "charge" you for downvotes. That alone stops it being a huge problem (IMHO).

> This is another one of the odd cases on StackOverflow. A few of the “Exact Duplicate” questions are not duplicates due to minor, but important, differences.

True. The problem here again is that you have editors deciding to close things that they don't necessarily know anything about. The same problem infests Wikipedia (deleting articles on "notability" grounds).

> The value of reputation: After the global recalculation, the site’s creators made a bold statement that participation is not valued on the site.

I actually don't know what this is referring to but then again I've been largely inactive. There have been several recalculations though (eg question upvotes from 10 to 5 karma). I don't really have a problem with this. If you're too obsessed with your karma, you're focusing on the wrong things. And I like that the same rules apply to everyone (eg it's better than question upvotes before X are 10, after X are 5).

I worried when SO took VC money that they were going to turn something that is very successful in one segment and ruin it with attempts at making a general Q&A platform. 2+ years on I'm still failing to see traction in the SE sites beyond SO. This may yet still become a problem.

Perhaps the simplest answer here is that SO isn't a "community" as such. It went with the Q&A format (over, say, forums) to discourage discussion. People often criticized it for making discussion hard when that was kinda the point.

I certainly never went to SO to hang out. Some do I'm sure. The focus is (and should be IMHO) on the content not the community.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4413684

[2]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/18393/cletus

[3]: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/130452-the-bureaucracy-is-ex...

[4]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4493959

[5]: http://stackexchange.com/sites

[6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9953/could-we-please...