>The first half of that sentence is absolutely true. But judging by the enormous number of upvotes, StackOverflow itself (i.e., the people who make it up) disagrees about that second bit.
That's a very dangerous thing, look at what happened to Reddit once there was an influx of people from Digg and 4chan. In fact it is critical that a site's focus is maintained in spite of people's opinions.
>It's just possible that the SO masters have fallen out of touch with the SO community. To the extent that they have done so, they are a detriment to that community.
Not really, SO is just maintaining their site's USP and doesn't want to generate flamebaity discussions. I appreciate them for it.
Tens of thousands of views and many answers and comments later, most everything that's happened in response to the question has been edifying.
There's simply no evidence there of a flamewar having been averted. The closest thing I've seen to an unreasonable insult that I've noticed in relation to the topic is an unfounded comparison to 4chan.
That's a very dangerous thing, look at what happened to Reddit once there was an influx of people from Digg and 4chan. In fact it is critical that a site's focus is maintained in spite of people's opinions.
>It's just possible that the SO masters have fallen out of touch with the SO community. To the extent that they have done so, they are a detriment to that community.
Not really, SO is just maintaining their site's USP and doesn't want to generate flamebaity discussions. I appreciate them for it.