<p>I agree with Whuber's excellent answer, I'd just make a further point. The question isn't really about stats.stackexchange since you could ask essentially the same thing on any stack exchange site meta. This question really is asking about the stack overflow/exchange model.</p>

<p>When the questions talks about 'providing a service to the OP' this is something that you get on a forum, not a Q&amp;A site. The service that a well run site like this should provide first and foremost is a great place to go to find the information you need (often via a Google search) from good answers to previously asked questions. Actually asking a question should not be the default way to use this site. Duplicate questions with 'something is better than nothing' answers clutter the place up, clog search results and encourage more duplicate/poor questions and more poorly thought out answers.</p>

<p>When you are used to using forums, it takes a while to get your head around the stack exchange model. These issues were hammered out in the early days of stack overflow but the eventual success of that original site shows the value of the format.</p>

<p>The only way to build a strong Q&amp;A site is for the community, questioners and answerers, to commit to the format. Otherwise everyone pulls in a different direction and the whole thing becomes a mess. This does means losing members from both sides of the Q&amp;A fence who find they don't like the format. That is a necessary growing pain along the road to building a trustable, quality over quantity repository of information.</p>
