> And no, I don't consider stackoverflow/stackexchange a replacement. It does a poor job of handling long threads where people refine their hypothesis based on new data and questions the OP answers.
And half of the answers (even the accepted ones) are subtly wrong.
And accepted answers that were right but get wrong over time still trump the right answers that were added later.
I think there's a type of mindless mob mentality created by systems like StackOverflow. When I see an answer with 500+ upvotes marked as correct, my mind wants to shut down and assume it's right.
Contrast that with the way forums used to work. You actually need to read the content and make your own judgement call on whether or not to use a lot of the advice.
The volume of poor quality participants on every platform seems to have skyrocketed in the last 10-15 years. My favorite is anything related to ZFS. I recognize some of the dev's handles from reading the issue tracker / trying to learn and several times I've seen random internet users contradicting them and telling them they're wrong.
And half of the answers (even the accepted ones) are subtly wrong.
And accepted answers that were right but get wrong over time still trump the right answers that were added later.