Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
StackOverflow is a machine designed to do one thing: make it so that, for any given programming question, you will get a search engine hit on their site and find a good answer quickly. And see some ads.<p>That's really it. Everything it does is geared toward that, and it does it quite well.<p>I have lots of SO points. A lot of them have come from answering common, basic questions. If you think points exist to prove merit, that's bad. But if you think points exist to show "this person makes the kind of content that brings programmers to our site and makes them happy", it's good. The latter is their intent.<p>Does having easy answers available on SO make us dumber? I doubt it. People have made the same argument about search engines, and you probably could have said the same about encyclopedias.