>but it's also definitely beneficial in places like Stack Overflow, where there's a logical reason to assume that the most popular answer might have any correla

>but it's also definitely beneficial in places like Stack Overflow, where there's a logical reason to assume that the most popular answer might have any correlation at all with the best answer. Sure, there's correlation but the correlation always breaks down whenever anyone needs it most. If you ask an easy question you could have just googled or read the man pages to get a decent answer is what's upvoted. But few people really need help answering those questions. If you ask a hard question potentially involving nuances and situational constraints or if you ask a very specific question requiring expertise you will get the same naive surface level answers highly up-voted and the one guy who actually knows your question has his answer downvoted to oblivion by the people who know just enough to be dangerous. If you aren't familiar with the subject matter in question it's even worse because a guy who knows what he's talking about answering your hard question and getting downvoted for it is indistinguishable from a guy who has no idea what he's talking about giving a wrong answer to an easy question. Of course the end result is that everyone who knows WTF they're talking about contributes minimally if at all. Stack Overflow is better than most subreddits because you can link a man page or doc but the more a subject requires subjective judgement the more it displays the pattern I described above.