StackOverflow built itself as a Question and Answer site and you can see the results of that original concept. Had they instead built themselves as a symptom a

StackOverflow built itself as a Question and Answer site and you can see the results of that original concept. Had they instead built themselves as a symptom and treatment website, much of the problems that they have had would have gone away. The original asker should not have nearly as much power as they do. Duplicates would instead be other symptoms. If you had a cough 5 years ago, come March of last year the cure would have changed for the same symptoms. But since SO is a question site, they would not have responded to such.