A really good post, and good point, but I also want to add that the first thing I thought when I saw the title was: "I don't think Stack Overflow should think o

A really good post, and good point, but I also want to add that the first thing I thought when I saw the title was: "I don't think Stack Overflow should think of itself as a community". In fact, SO is fantastic, the best ever at what it does, by far. It does what it does, really well. When it started, I occasionally asked or answered questions; now I don't, and it has nothing to do with community (good or bad). It's because, you know, all my questions are already asked on there, and answered, often multiple times. This doesn't mean there won't be more questions that need asking, as of course there will for new technologies especially. It means that the ratio of users to questions has risen exponentially, so that the % who need to do _anything_ on SO has dropped. You want the typical newbie experience? It's this: 1) types question into Google 2) clicks on link to SO 3) may have to repeat steps 1-2 a couple times 4) finds answer to their question 5) goes away There is nothing in this that resembles "community". Like wikipedia, there may be a core group of ultra devoted users who keep adding new content. And you know what? That's ok. Perfect, even. The problem with SO's community, is that it's thought of as a community. The worst thing they could do with SO, is try to make it a community. We already have Facebook and Twitter, and they didn't turn out so well. We don't have another substitute for Stack Overflow, if they try to turn it into a social network.