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

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 Turns out people hate wading through pages of outdated discussion.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.