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I don't see how "not a forum for debate" means "a forum for 'plz email teh codez' posts" in your reckoning. There are many fine questions with right answers that are not open-ended navel-gazing.

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The point is that if debate isn't allowed you aren't likely to have higher quality posters than the average for programmers. And the reality is that there are tons of lazy/stupid programmers out there that just want "plz email teh codez".

The forums that I have seen work best at maintaining abnormally high levels of quality posters are ones where the Q&A is effectively secondary to the debate. The reason is that the fun of debating keeps the high quality posters around and answering shitty/repetitive questions.

I think your first conclusion is wrong. From what I have seen, Stack Overflow appears to be fairly well-supplied with quality posters, but they just don't have as many questions as the "plz email teh codez" crowd. The problem isn't that good questions are generally going unanswered, and it isn't even that good and novel questions are in short supply, but that there aren't as many good questions and they're having trouble stemming the tide of bad questions. The disproportionate rise of bad questions is the core problem.

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