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    "If we get some magic-bullet™ that can answer any* question... on the spot, many of the Stack Exchange sites mostly wouldn't be needed anymore." Whoa there! The value of the Stack Exchange ecosystem goes way, way beyond just a collection of not-wrong answers. There is a very real, very large and very vibrant collection of communities of interacting people here! Commented Dec 11, 2022 at 20:40
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    @uhoh yeah I shouldn't have said that so confidently as such a new community member. Could you elaborate? I might want to edit some of your ideas into my post (with your permission if you'd give it). This also reminded me of something I read from someone from a math SE site: that each person is different, and having something explained in many different ways can be useful too. I'll try to go dig up what post that was. Commented Dec 11, 2022 at 20:42
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    SE sites exist to answer questions, not to maintain a community. If a chatbot could feasibly answer any and all questions put to it, the communities could very well go elsewhere to continue being communities, and probably would be better to, since much of the reason for the community would be redundant and the few useful functions left for humans are very suboptimal for socialising and interacting in a less-than-formal way. SE would not be needed in that case, and you are right to say so. Commented Dec 17, 2022 at 23:37
  • @Nij The Site Tour begins: "Stack Exchange is a network of 180 communities that are created and run by experts and enthusiasts like you who are passionate about a specific topic. We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on each community's area of expertise." Essentially, SE is about community, and each community is here for the purpose of building libraries of Questions and Answers on their area of expertise. Perhaps we could then say that SE sites exist to enable communities of experts to build Q&A libraries. Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 11:25
  • @Stevecanhelp the purpose really is the library of answers, not the community around it, for all that we've moved in a squishy direction over the years that departs from that real mission. I wrote about this when some Code of Conduct changes were proposed: meta.stackexchange.com/a/312206/307622 Commented Feb 27, 2024 at 9:28