> SO wasn't a discussion forum, it was wikipedia for programming.

They changed what they wanted to be multiple times, and even after they had settled on a policy they didn’t enforce it consistently.

I feel like the "repository of knowledge" identity was pretty clear for around a decade (at least for main Q&A, not Chat or Discussions). It was inconsistently enforced because the volume of low-quality questions exceeded the ability of the "moderators" to enforce it. At its peak, the backlog of questions in the process of being closed was about a full month's worth of question volume (this doesn't include questions that did get closed or questions that didn't yet start the process of being closed).