Its a site for collecting karma updoots for the sake of collecting karma updoots according to irrational site traditions. I agree, its definitely not a site to

Its a site for collecting karma updoots for the sake of collecting karma updoots according to irrational site traditions. I agree, its definitely not a site to request any knowledge from strangers, as I don't want to play their karma collecting game, SE is useless to me. "Playing the wrong game" is a problem with any social media that has up and down arrows, including here on HN. With careful moderating and meta-moderation its possible to keep HN useful; SE is an example of a decayed site that is no longer useful due to lack of curation. Boards like 4chan's /DIY/ are more useful and on topic than SE possibly BECAUSE 4chan does not have up and down arrows. When engineering a social media site it seems two paths are stable and successful: Heavily moderated and centrally controlled/censored with up and down arrows, or anything goes with no up and down arrows to click. Other designs seem to degenerate into noise.