It really boils down to what SO optimizes for which seems to be less clutter, higher quality answers & lack of subjective questions(vim v. emacs). I think thei

It really boils down to what SO optimizes for which seems to be less clutter, higher quality answers & lack of subjective questions(vim v. emacs). I think their strategy alienates people as users(like myself) from posting, but encourages consumption. I only post there when I have a difficult problem I haven't been able to solve. I think that is the system working. They have alienated some power users, I remember a thread ~1 year ago about someone deleting their account on SO because of these policies but I suspect a lot of the pure engineers and egotists like posting and dealing strictly with interesting thought provoking content. tl;dr What SO sees as its major asset, others may see as "decline"