> Stack overflow is and always was a question and answer site. To attempt to take credit for the following value of search results containing stack overflow que

> Stack overflow is and always was a question and answer site. To attempt to take credit for the following value of search results containing stack overflow questions that have already been answered that sound like what you’re asking is to take credit for search engines and to take credit for your users’ hard work. I don't know man ... while I can kind of agree with the general "thing" you're trying to convey here (that of SO hard-headedly blaming users for "doing it wrong"), this particular point is one that I'll have to defend him/them on -- SERP-as-an-interface was a primary consideration from day one. I listened to all the podcasts they did during development, and they were pretty explicit about it in all the blog posts. They knew that most people would arrive at a previously asked question via search engine, and they optimized the experience for that reality. That's why they wanted each question and answer page to be an "artifact", something that grows over time, gets edited, improved ... precisely because they thought of this ahead of time ;)