Weird. I was on IRC for many years before Stack Overflow (and crap alternatives like Experts Exchange, Yahoo! Answers, etc) existed, and I have pretty much the exact opposite experience. For example, while SO tags certainly have different distributions of expertise, out of my most recent 30 questions (involving mainly Python, Django, Docker, Rust and WebExtensions) only four have no answers yet.
> StackOverflow is from the social media generation of software, where you need a pretty avatar, and accumulate points, and there's rules you must not break.
Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response.
Stack* is about questions and answers, learning and doing.
> Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response.
All (software) IRC channels have basically the same culture. It's essentially what you mean when you say StackOverflow "naturally encourages all the good behaviour".
I have no idea what you mean by "supplicate before the right people to get a civil response". I don't think I've ever seen that. Unlike StackOverflow, you have the option to ask one person directly, but you're never obligated to.
> StackOverflow is from the social media generation of software, where you need a pretty avatar, and accumulate points, and there's rules you must not break.
Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response.
Stack* is about questions and answers, learning and doing.