Stack Exchange sites are not mere social media but more like an encyclopedia for specific topics. Answering as well as asking good questions requires extensive research and being mindful of future readers.

Sad to see SE contributors are compared with FB users.

Agreed! I'm active on several SE sites and every quality answer takes me time to research, write, and edit.

It is when you do it for 3144 days in a row. Plus they're not just a bunch of 'lol' type low effort responses.

Haha, yea, this isn't like having a snap streak of showing a funny face to your friend for 3,144 days. But alas, the internet at large probably thinks that is a harder feat than this.

I don't think we can equate the effort between answering technical questions and a comment on Reddit/Facebook.

While the occasional comment feels like work (e.g. citations), that isn't the norm so 23/day is meaningless.

Plus SO answers actually contribute positively to the world, whereas arguably social media comments do not.

This.

[ example meant to highlight the difference between a low-impact, low-effort comment from a social media site like reddit versus sites like SO where some degree of technical expertise is a precondition ]

How is throwaway comments and opinions on generic social media sites in any way comparable to answering questions on a very technical subject in order to assist people working in said technical area?

I don’t disagree with your statement at all. However, people who contribute useful edits to Wikipedia or high quality answers to Stack Overflow are doing a bit more work than your average Facebook poster :) sorry you’re getting buried on this, I assume your point wasn’t necessarily that it wasn’t more useful than that.

Yes, I was merely commenting about Volume.

Also, if you are passionate about a topic, replying answers comes very naturally to you.

But I don't expect HN to get it

The way I see it, there’s not as much of a gap as people think between the 99th percentile and 50th percentile users, because being active on one of these sites isn’t that difficult. However, I think this person does stick out. It seems there is a massive gap between them and even second place. I think that’s what really makes this astonishing.

Yes, because posting memes is just as easy as posting technical answers.

I don't think you are being serious when you mention Facebook and Reddit.