Like others, I’m trying to understand why the company is having a hard time getting community consistently right.
It occurs to me that, at its core, the problem is one of signals. I believe it’s the same fundamental problem faced by social media companies. The end users’ behavior and communication is a signal. Another set of signals is from shareholders and advertisers. Company decisions are profit-driven, meaning they will tend to align with the signals from shareholders/advertisers, and not tend to align (notice I did not say “tend not to align” - a crucial difference) with signals from end users (in the case of SO, this is askers, answerers, and moderators: the “community”).
I have no doubt that the company - and all companies with a similar business model where the product is seen by users as being the free thing-of-value-to-them, and by the company and those that pay the bills as a system providing access to the users for a modest fee - understands very well that keeping the users happy and engaged is foundational to the success of the business. But the financial signals are immediate and clear, and the community signals are indirect, delayed, and often messy. The human mind, no matter how brilliant, just can’t compete with such a setup, try as they might. And I don’t doubt the leadership of such companies does try. It’s just that the business model is really great for initial growth, and really great at having that momentum pull the company past the initial golden age and on into a vicious cycle of decline.
If that sounds overly pessimistic, I am hopeful that there’s yet another business model innovation yet to blossom: one beyond simple pay-for-value, beyond the misaligned signals mess we have now. Will we find it? Is it a pipe dream? Time will tell.