The curation is far and away the worst part of SO. So many interesting threads killed for being off topic. I've never seen moderation add a thing to that site. Its success is in its structure and voting. They've done everything in their power to kill that from a moderation angle.
Agreed. Often the questions they kill are the only ones that could possibly be useful to me. I don't need someone to regurgitate the manual/docs for me. I need answers to things like "what is the best ad library to use on Android?" that would have saved me a lot of trial and error and testing to come up with a good result. But "opinion" questions like that are not allowed.
No, it's success is the curation. You just don't understand the site. There is a reason SO persists and is so popular, while so many clones that do exactly the same structure and voting fail miserably.
The 'interesting threads' are exactly the problem. Those are discussions and they don't suit the format. If you want to talk about something, find a forum. SO does not have threads, it has questions and answers, and that is why it's useful.
Turns out people hate wading through pages of outdated discussion. People are forgetting what it was like before SO. Stop expecting SO to be all things to all people - if you want a discussion, go register at a programming forum. SO does what it is trying to do well.
