Their traffic and user engagement says they have a lot of "users", and vastly more than their competition (despite the huge hype about Quora, they got absolutel

Their traffic and user engagement says they have a lot of "users", and vastly more than their competition (despite the huge hype about Quora, they got absolutely wrecked by SO/SE). I don't go in for the gamification stuff, but I like finding correct answers without the bullshit of forced logins, SEO trickery, ghosting of answers, etc. I login to SO/SE because I get value from it (I ask questions and logging in let's me get notifications when someone answers). I suspect the gamification is the least of what they got right. The core things they got right are that they respect their users, they make it easy/quick, they give you the best answer where you expect to find it (including in search engine results and without logging in), and they treat the content as thought it belongs to the community rather than the company. It's kinda like what reddit (and HN) got right. The upvotes are ancillary, but fun sometimes.