I bet this is a result of the dichotomy of purpose that this comment by notriddle is describing[1]: > They want it to form a general resource, with Stack Over

I bet this is a result of the dichotomy of purpose that this comment by notriddle is describing[1]: > They want it to form a general resource, with Stack Overflow being less of a bulletin board and more of a reference guide. The problem is that their UI doesn't telegraph this very well (I blame the way they leave the original asker's name and avatar visible on the question), and neither do their marketing materials. They're kinda trying to have it both ways, baiting people with the chance to get their own question getting answered and then switching to editing their question into something more generally useful than something just for them. Easy to look at an old question and think "There's no point posting another answer here, the asker is long gone." If we thought about it more like a wiki page and less like Yahoo Answers that wouldn't be the case. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163113