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I’m in the same boat. 10k rep on SO and softeng.se, and I barely participate anymore. For me the most frustrating part is that the rules forbid vague questions

by Joeri 9y ago

I’m in the same boat. 10k rep on SO and softeng.se, and I barely participate anymore. For me the most frustrating part is that the rules forbid vague questions with opinionated answers, but that at this point in my career most of the things I find interesting are all like that so there’s almost nothing I want to get answers to that I can ask. Software architecture questions are very difficult to ask without triggering overbroadness. Another category that is off limits are getting started type questions, again they’re considered too vague (but that’s the whole point, the user doesn’t know where to start). And the illogical ban on pointing to research involving statistics also drives me batty. I’ve had arguments with moderators before where my answer was bad because it pointed to capers jones’ research, one of the most authorative sources of good software dev practices. I always feel like it’s a game of dodge the moderator bot to get questions to not be closed, unless they’re of the boring easy to answer briefly and precisely variety.

bonesss 9y ago
At an arms length it really seems like there should be some kind of delineations of the questions. "What document backend to use with Drupal?" is a question whose answers are in constant flux. It is a bad match for and Authoritative Language Compendium. But it's also the kinds of thing people wonder about, it's a relevant tech question, and the dialog around something like that is easily as valuable as the accepted answer since everyone is skinning a different cat. So instead of "overly broad, no discussion for you" I'd rather see those questions get routed to "conversation-SO" instead of "reference-SO"...
- Lionsion 9y ago
  > "What document backend to use with Drupal?" is a question whose answers are in constant flux. It is a bad match for and Authoritative Language Compendium. But it's also the kinds of thing people wonder about, it's a relevant tech question, and the dialog around something like that is easily as valuable as the accepted answer since everyone is skinning a different cat. IIRC, they did something like that. It was called programmers.stackexchange.com, and I used it a couple times and it was great. Then some power-that-be decided it "wasn't working" (probably because it didn't fit the SO only-kind-of-good-question rubric) and changed the focus be a clone of SO with some minor difference in emphasis.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    I loved the early programmers.se. Then the mod hammer came down and broke it.
    - shagie 9y ago
      People weren't interested in maintaining the early programmers.se site. It was a "what to browse when there's nothing else to do." As the crud started piling up the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. It takes a lot of work to maintain a free for all site by the community. It takes less work by the community to maintain a heavily moderated site. The culture of a site is a reflection of how much work people are willing to put into keeping it that way.
      - Lionsion 9y ago
        > As the crud started piling up You'll have to be more specific about what that "crud" is, as SO's culture seems to have a tendency to reclassify the baby as dirt and throw him out with the bathwater. > the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. Seems like there should have been more options on the table than "abandon" or "remake in SO's image." SO has a better population to answer subjective questions than most of the alternatives it tries to push people towards. They really should have been more flexible.
        shagie 9y ago
        There's some remnants of this era on the meta site. For example, consider the argument for https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/836/ https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... asking "who would be the most efficacious patron saint of programmers". It was a the era of "what should I name my cat?" ( https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEZ2Z.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEZ2Z.png ) and Perks for new programmers ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/ https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1069... ), Do you fart in your cube? ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49548/ https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4954... ), what is your favorite cartoon? The enforcement notice was with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... (which also lists a lot of the water cooler days of PSE links). The history is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415 https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415 . Also give https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/17/merging-season/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/17/merging-season/ a read. Note the: > There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:
ItsMe000001 9y ago
> Software architecture questions Are you trying to use SO or the Software Engineering site? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ They also have a site for software recommendations now, so they created alternative sites for some categories of questions forbidden on SO. I'm not sure if it hadn't been better to try to integrate it into SO though, using tags for example.
- barrkel 9y ago
  >> I’m in the same boat. 10k rep on SO and softeng.se It's right there in the parent's text.
Joeri 9y ago
This is an example of what I mean: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/369897/design-differences-in-angular-ui-components-and-regular-js-ui-components https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3698... I'm sure the moderator feels entirely justified by closing this question, and going by the rules they are perfectly right, but it still feels wrong to me to turn this user away instead of working with them to figure out a way to make their questions fit the website's format. But, that takes a lot of work, and moderators are volunteers whose time is entirely on their own dime. I suspect that if the stackexchange network had paid moderators the outcome would be very different, but they probably don't have the funding model to support that. I myself also don't do moderator duties on the SE network, so I really shouldn't be blaming the moderators. I merely want to point out the frustration and the non-optimal outcome, not lay blame at the moderators' feet.

by Joeri 9y ago

bonesss 9y ago

At an arms length it really seems like there should be some kind of delineations of the questions. "What document backend to use with Drupal?" is a question whose answers are in constant flux. It is a bad match for and Authoritative Language Compendium. But it's also the kinds of thing people wonder about, it's a relevant tech question, and the dialog around something like that is easily as valuable as the accepted answer since everyone is skinning a different cat. So instead of "overly broad, no discussion for you" I'd rather see those questions get routed to "conversation-SO" instead of "reference-SO"...

Lionsion 9y ago
> "What document backend to use with Drupal?" is a question whose answers are in constant flux. It is a bad match for and Authoritative Language Compendium. But it's also the kinds of thing people wonder about, it's a relevant tech question, and the dialog around something like that is easily as valuable as the accepted answer since everyone is skinning a different cat. IIRC, they did something like that. It was called programmers.stackexchange.com, and I used it a couple times and it was great. Then some power-that-be decided it "wasn't working" (probably because it didn't fit the SO only-kind-of-good-question rubric) and changed the focus be a clone of SO with some minor difference in emphasis.
- Joeri 9y ago
  I loved the early programmers.se. Then the mod hammer came down and broke it.
  - shagie 9y ago
    People weren't interested in maintaining the early programmers.se site. It was a "what to browse when there's nothing else to do." As the crud started piling up the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. It takes a lot of work to maintain a free for all site by the community. It takes less work by the community to maintain a heavily moderated site. The culture of a site is a reflection of how much work people are willing to put into keeping it that way.
    - Lionsion 9y ago
      > As the crud started piling up You'll have to be more specific about what that "crud" is, as SO's culture seems to have a tendency to reclassify the baby as dirt and throw him out with the bathwater. > the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. Seems like there should have been more options on the table than "abandon" or "remake in SO's image." SO has a better population to answer subjective questions than most of the alternatives it tries to push people towards. They really should have been more flexible.
      - shagie 9y ago
        There's some remnants of this era on the meta site. For example, consider the argument for https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/836/ https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... asking "who would be the most efficacious patron saint of programmers". It was a the era of "what should I name my cat?" ( https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEZ2Z.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEZ2Z.png ) and Perks for new programmers ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/ https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1069... ), Do you fart in your cube? ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49548/ https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4954... ), what is your favorite cartoon? The enforcement notice was with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... (which also lists a lot of the water cooler days of PSE links). The history is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415 https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415 . Also give https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/17/merging-season/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/17/merging-season/ a read. Note the: > There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:

ItsMe000001 9y ago

> Software architecture questions Are you trying to use SO or the Software Engineering site? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ They also have a site for software recommendations now, so they created alternative sites for some categories of questions forbidden on SO. I'm not sure if it hadn't been better to try to integrate it into SO though, using tags for example.

barrkel 9y ago
>> I’m in the same boat. 10k rep on SO and softeng.se It's right there in the parent's text.

Joeri 9y ago

This is an example of what I mean: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/369897/design-differences-in-angular-ui-components-and-regular-js-ui-components https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3698... I'm sure the moderator feels entirely justified by closing this question, and going by the rules they are perfectly right, but it still feels wrong to me to turn this user away instead of working with them to figure out a way to make their questions fit the website's format. But, that takes a lot of work, and moderators are volunteers whose time is entirely on their own dime. I suspect that if the stackexchange network had paid moderators the outcome would be very different, but they probably don't have the funding model to support that. I myself also don't do moderator duties on the SE network, so I really shouldn't be blaming the moderators. I merely want to point out the frustration and the non-optimal outcome, not lay blame at the moderators' feet.