Really, I think the issue is that StackOverflow isn't what it appears to be. When you visit StackOverflow, all your instincts tell you it's a place where you ca

Really, I think the issue is that StackOverflow isn't what it appears to be. When you visit StackOverflow, all your instincts tell you it's a place where you can ask any question and discuss the answer with people who are interested in the question, like on a message board (or the abysmal Yahoo Answers). Really, StackOverflow is more like a crowd-sourced FAQ for programming. It's a wiki, a reference document, not a discussion board. That's why they don't like non-specific or duplicate questions. Non-specific and duplicate questions aren't helpful in a FAQ. That's why they don't like humor. You wouldn't put humor on Wikipedia. The other problem is that StackOverflow is fairly static after the initial answering period on a question, so they can't even have questions which compare programming languages or databases or such, because those answers will change and no one is going to come back and update the information on the question page. But information does get updated on wikis. So even though StackOverflow is essentially functioning as a wiki, it doesn't present the affordances of a wiki, so people don't keep pages up-to-date like they would on a wiki. Notice that the way a non-participating StackOverflow user uses the site is exactly the same way a non-participating Wikipedia user uses the site. You search for something, the StackOverflow question or Wikipedia article comes up as the first result. You click it, get the information you need, and leave. StackOverflow is a wiki-FAQ for programming posing as a discussion board. (And just like on Wikipedia, I don't participate on StackOverflow because I expect anything I ask to be closed for one reason or another just like I expect anything I add to Wikipedia to be deleted for one reason or another.)