It's sort of embarrassing how much less efficient man pages are than a Google search to a SO question.
The justification I usually hear is that SO is for learning to solve one case, while man pages are for learning how the tool works. There's some merit to that, but if a tool has some hidden gotcha or unusual use, SO tends to make that much clearer than the actual documentation.
I suppose comprehensiveness was a higher priority when there wasn't an online discussion of every imaginable case, but it still feels like a lot could be done to convey the same amount of information more gracefully.
The justification I usually hear is that SO is for learning to solve one case, while man pages are for learning how the tool works. There's some merit to that, but if a tool has some hidden gotcha or unusual use, SO tends to make that much clearer than the actual documentation.
I suppose comprehensiveness was a higher priority when there wasn't an online discussion of every imaginable case, but it still feels like a lot could be done to convey the same amount of information more gracefully.