Right, but you can see it’s a bit fuzzy on what the thing actually is, very possibly because they themselves weren’t quite clear about that. The feel-good wording could sort of be made to fit a forum if they wished, but ultimately they didn’t. (Or possibly the homepage of SO at the time was the place that contained the actual description.)

Part of the difficulty is that Jeff and Joel weren't in agreement for what it should be.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-th...

Note the first revision and its author https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/1003841/1

Then look at https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions (both pages, but the key part is on the most recent one) with the closed, locked, and deleted actions and who did them.

The (for lack of better terms) Atwoodian and Spoloskian philosophies of how the site should be run and that fracture continue to this day with (excessively simplified caricatures) some looking to delete everything that isn't good so that they could concentrate on what was left and others trying to fix everything even though it isn't good to start with and a "we'll get around to it" for most of the content.

That the fracture hasn't been resolved and Stack Overflow corporate still hasn't really come down and said what they want it to be (though they want more "engagement" so it feels like it will be more Spoloskian - but they don't want the Atwoodians to leave).

wow, that question really exemplifies the debate here I think. It's a simple and answerable question, which will be an exremely common question from beginners. And yet it was almost instantly closed despite being posted by one of the founders of the site.