Stack Exchange is not a forum: the role of “niceness” on a Q&A site (2012)

I submitted this because I found it interesting how this differs from modern Stack Exchange, specifically the older focus on it being a Q&A site rather than a forum.

From TFA: "But in the end, this sort of navel-gazing misses the point: we’re not here to pat each other on the back and hand out gold stars, much less waggle our fingers at the jackasses – we’re here to share the knowledge of our craft."

It seems like recently Stack Exchange seems to be more focused on being a community as well (but still focusing on being a knowledge base):

From https://meta.stackexchange.com/conduct: "Our mission is to build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, and to foster collaboration within a safe and welcoming community rooted in kindness, cooperation and mutual respect."

I'm unsure if this has any significant difference with the attitude from 2012, but this was the main reason I submitted -- from "SE is not a forum (community?)" to "SE is both a knowledge base and a community".

However, I think overall, SE has not changed much from its original goals, which is a good thing IMO. For example, this Math SE Meta post shows that enforcement in quality (from the perspective of it being a knowledge base) is still important: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/33508/enforcem...