It's not the software it's the community. Here's the exact same software with a community that tolerates a list: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples

That said the community+software is good at what it does. I can be sad it's intolerant of lists without needing to disparage it further.

It's really the software. It isn't made to host lists. Votes on lists are historically on the item (OMG YES JQUERY!!!!!), not on the answer (You should use jQuery because a. b. c. d.), and that isn't how the rest of the site works.

Besides in a Q&A network, a "list question" has "list answers" where every "answer" is a "list", rather than an item of that list. Even that doesn't really work because that's not historically the way the site is actually used.

See also the following for the rationale:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-an...

The problem is that the quality of participants/knowledge on the discussion sites simply isn't as good as SE.

No knock on SE. Quite the opposite.

But I frequently have questions that aren't SE style questions, and I wish I knew where to take them for such intelligent and informed responses.

The theory (a very sound one, based on internal observation) is that the strict "answers, not discussion" format is what attracts and retains high quality participants.

I really strongly believe that it's an either/or proposition, you either get discussion or you get quality answers to questions. Discussion "sucks the air out", so to speak.

And since there are already so many places for discussion on the internet, it's better for us to focus on Q&A.