[zahlman]

When someone new comes to Stack Overflow, and tries to get something from it that it's explicitly not there to provide, and I politely say "hey here are some documents about what the site is and what we expect from questions, I'm sorry but we can't allow people to answer this without addressing these problems, because the purpose of questions here isn't actually to work with you one-on-one and get your code to work", and then that person swears at me and is never heard from again...

... No, I am not at all "blind" to the fact that I'm "driving" people like that away, or to the "impact" I'm having. I've read many of their off-site rants, too. It's a popular art form, even. So popular that sometimes people bring links to it back to the meta site. So popular that the company staff occasionally try to lecture us about it. After all, it's bad for the bottom line when people don't stick around and watch ads (and to hell with whatever else they do on the site).

But those documents objectively exist; the standards are established and thoroughly documented; the questions objectively are there to build a reference (this is even described right up front in https://stackoverflow.com/tour , although the wording is still lacking and we aren't empowered to fix it); as an objective matter we don't provide a help desk, debugging service or support forum; and swearing at me is a code of conduct violation.

[stormblooperz]

I'm sorry you've been swore at, that's obviously not on.

I guess I would say: look at the big picture, Stack Overflow is almost dead. It's a bit like driving a car off a cliff because there's a post-it note on the wheel that describes that purpose of the car as to go inexorably in this one cardinal direction. At least the standards are established and thoroughly documented! The document objectively exists!

Also: I know several kind and smart people who have sworn off Stack Overflow forever, not because they misunderstand the purpose of the site, but because of the unkindness and nonsensical nature of the moderation. You are aware of the "popular art form" reporting these experiences - those with empathy pay attention to it.

[zahlman]

> not because they misunderstand the purpose of the site, but because of the unkindness and nonsensical nature of the moderation.

I have read countless examples of this sort of thing, with people attesting to me that the people who wrote it do in fact understand the purpose of the site.

I have yet to see a single example where I was convinced they actually did.

They very frequently write in terms that imply complete ignorance of fundamentals (such as what a "moderator" is, and who has what privileges and responsibilities on the site).

> You are aware of the "popular art form" reporting these experiences - those with empathy pay attention to it.

I have paid attention. I have done close reading. I have been empathetic. I have spent many hours of my life on this.

> It's a bit like driving a car off a cliff because there's a post-it note on the wheel that describes that purpose of the car as to go inexorably in this one cardinal direction.

Your implication is that the purpose I describe for Stack Overflow is somehow invalid.

I disagree in the strongest possible terms, and find this implication actually offensive.

But even if it weren't valid, that doesn't entitle other people to come in and try to change it. It didn't entitle them in 2008, either, even though the vision wasn't fully fleshed out and communicated yet. (It probably started to become clear around 2012, but still not in a way that allowed curators to coordinate and describe clear policy.)

[stormblooperz]

So you have paid attention and read countless examples of people's experiences with Stack Overflow, but have concluded that, in fact, they are all in the wrong?

Frankly, it just doesn't matter at this point. The time to have done something about it was several years ago, it's a lost cause at this point. Whether you reflect and recognise your part in that, and learn and grow from it, is up to you.