Very interesting.

I think Rarst hit the nail on the head that WPSE really does fill the developer support gap in the official WordPress.org forums. Even as an occasional support volunteer myself, I'd be much less tempted to use official channels for developer support, mostly because of the death of capable volunteers.

There are some that argue that's a gap we should try to fill on the official forums, but I actually disagree. I think WPSE offers a great deal of infrastructure that wp.org would need to implement to be able to compete.

That said, I think the work we're doing on the new official developer hub will really lend itself as a good complement to the fine support happening over on WPSE. It's worth mentioning that we actually have a contributor team dedicated to DevhHub of which Rarst is actually a member!