Why We Do Not Show Streaks, Followers or Post Counts
Every engagement metric we removed made the answers better. That was not what we expected.
We shipped daily streaks in 2030 and removed them nine months later. Posting volume went up by a fifth. Acceptance rate went down by a tenth. That is the wrong trade in a place whose product is the archive.
Streaks Reward Showing Up, Not Being Right
A streak asks you to post today whether or not you have anything to say. The marginal post produced by that pressure is, almost by definition, the worst post you were going to make.
Follower Counts Turn Answers Into Audience Building
Once answers accrue an audience, the incentive shifts from answering the question to writing something quotable. We watched answers get longer, more general and less useful within weeks.
What We Kept
Reputation, because it is earned from acceptance rather than activity. And the accepted-answer count, because it is a measure of problems actually solved. Both are lagging, boring, and hard to game.
The Metric We Watch Internally
Percentage of questions with an accepted answer, tracked weekly. It is unglamorous and it is the only number that has ever predicted whether people come back.
