[aeorgnoieang]

Ideally, those 'discussions' would be incorporated into an answer, if only a new answer. Even-more-ideally, a single (most-upvoted) answer would incorporate all of the info from other answers and subsequent comments. That, of course, doesn't happen that often.

Every Wikipedia article has a talk page. But that doesn't mean that the purpose of the site is discussion. I think the same thing applies to SO.