It's just subjective and unproductive noise. The strict moderation and categorization is what makes stack exchange useful in general. Why not use a free-form

It's just subjective and unproductive noise. The strict moderation and categorization is what makes stack exchange useful in general. Why not use a free-form forum like Reddit for that kind of question? Because you know the answers are going to bullshit opinions and holy wars, mostly by people that are trying to solve different problems than you, or are actually less knowledgeable than you. Given the fact that Reddit and similar forums suck for finding solutions to specific problems, why should a Q/A site that is good for finding solutions for specific problems try to emulate it? Quora and Yahoo answers also suck because the questions are almost entirely anecdote and opinion based, and it seems to be acceptable to cite "experience" as a source for bullshit opinions. "Being a pilot with 10 years of experience" is not an adequate reference for a response to a question about the safety of using a cellphone radio on a commercial flight, nor does "being a veteran" count as original research into Iraqi popular support for the 2003 invasion. Of the good "answers" from Quora that I've seen shared, all are basically long form blog posts that have found a "close enough" question to answer, rather than been motivated by the question, and I would have actually preferred to read them on medium or some other blog site. However interesting they are, they aren't answers. I think projects like Rosetta code are useful for comparisons of programming languages, because they keep it concrete. You can also look at big high-quality projects on github or whatever and directly judge the subjective qualities of a language for yourself, based on how readable the code looks to you.