You are afraid of sites like Stack Overflow? That's all they are - people exchanging information for little more than popularity.

People using stack overflow either want answers to their questions, to help others, or to showcase their expertise. "Exchanging information" is barely a mechanism for that, but never an aim itself.

Funnily enough, stack overflow is heavily gamified: part of the incentive for answering questions is to increase your score and earn medals.