5 ms·

No thanks from me. The no discussions rule means the only questions on the site are the trivial questions that could be answered by reading some documentation.

by 4ad 15y ago

No thanks from me. The no discussions rule means the only questions on the site are the trivial questions that could be answered by reading some documentation. If questions are broad or open ended, the value lies in the discussion, not in any particular answer. I also found that many accepted answers are blatantly wrong, or encourage very poor practice. Sure, the StackExchange network is better than experts-exchange or quora, in the sense that's a much better implementation of a concept, but I believe there's just very little value in that concept.

pierreten 15y ago
Go fuck yourself
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
bp_ 15y ago
SE is not meant to be a replacement for reddit or traditional forums. If you want to have discussion by all means have discussion. Just don't do it on SE because SE wasn't made for discussion. Just because echo doesn't read from files doesn't mean it's useless. If you need to read from files you just use cat instead. Sure, you can coerce both to do the other's job, but it'll be messy and only work half the time and other people will be annoyed at you. Different solutions for different needs.
- SteveJS 15y ago
  It's not the software it's the community. Here's the exact same software with a community that tolerates a list: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples That said the community+software is good at what it does. I can be sad it's intolerant of lists without needing to disparage it further.
  - bp_ 15y ago
    It's really the software. It isn't made to host lists. Votes on lists are historically on the item (OMG YES JQUERY!!!!!), not on the answer (You should use jQuery because a. b. c. d.), and that isn't how the rest of the site works. Besides in a Q&A network, a "list question" has "list answers" where every "answer" is a "list", rather than an item of that list. Even that doesn't really work because that's not historically the way the site is actually used. See also the following for the rationale: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-an...
- dbecker 15y ago
  The problem is that the quality of participants/knowledge on the discussion sites simply isn't as good as SE. No knock on SE. Quite the opposite. But I frequently have questions that aren't SE style questions, and I wish I knew where to take them for such intelligent and informed responses.
  - kmontrose 15y ago
    The theory (a very sound one, based on internal observation) is that the strict "answers, not discussion" format is what attracts and retains high quality participants. I really strongly believe that it's an either/or proposition, you either get discussion or you get quality answers to questions. Discussion "sucks the air out", so to speak. And since there are already so many places for discussion on the internet, it's better for us to focus on Q&A.
fayden 15y ago
When you go to the public pool, you don't complain about not being able to play golf, do you? StackExchange is a Q&A community website. Although sometimes discussion would be appreciated, it is not what it was meant for. And by all means, if you find an accepted answer to be wrong, downvote and comment it! The whole point of StackExchange websites is to rate questions and answers!
- melling 15y ago
  I think the person is simply frustrated because he realizes that StackExchange could be so much better. I quit a few years ago when they changed all question upvotes to be only worth 5 points, but rejoined about a year and a half ago because it's still the best existing option. When asking questions, I try to make them good enough so that other people will find them useful in the future, and it's great when I get a like-minded answer. Some examples: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9708945/how-to-embed-a-nestedlist-in-a-tabpanel http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9708945/how-to-embed-a-ne... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10252440/changing-the-detail-container-in-a-nestedlist http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10252440/changing-the-det... Still, I think StackOverflow could be taken up a notch to allow more collaboration and organization. Also, wouldn't it be great to be able to provide runnable source code in some sort of git archive? For some languages like Javascript the code in the questions/answers could be in something like http://jsfiddle.net http://jsfiddle.net Ideally, a group of people could pick any topic and essentially write several books (beginner and advanced) by asking lots of questions. At least that was my initial belief. Say, for example, you wanted to learn elisp, and you typed: "Hello world in emacs", well I've got that answered: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-world-in-emacs http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-wor... I didn't quite get a book with Elisp, but I did throw down quite a few breadcrumbs: CGI: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532311/cgi-programming-in-elisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532311/cgi-programming-i... AWK Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2260294/awk-print-2-1-in-emacs-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2260294/awk-print-2-1-in-... Extract URLs: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642184/extracting-urls-from-an-emacs-buffer http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642184/extracting-urls-f... Parse CSV/Gen HTML: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541682/lisp-script-to-parse-csv-and-generate-html-table http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541682/lisp-script-to-pa... Wrap Selection like Textmate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1558178/wrap-selection-in-open-close-tag-like-textmate http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1558178/wrap-selection-in... MySql (Unanswered): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-from-elisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-fro... Generate a Quiz: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz-in-emacs-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz... Open Browser: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-from-elisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-fro... Generate a Quiz (Common Lisp): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz-in-common-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2115341/sorting-buffer-lines-by-a-field http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2115341/sorting-buffer-li... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2358604/convert-decimal-hex http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2358604/convert-decimal-h... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170120/operating-on-multiple-lists http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170120/operating-on-mult...
codinghorror 15y ago
Discussion is only tolerated insofar as it allows refinement (and editing for improvement) of the question and the answers. Discussion in and of itself is not the goal; getting a verifiably great answer to your question -- even if you didn't ask it -- is! At Stack Exchange, we do science in the small. Bite-size, fun-size units of science that shouldn't feel like work, but collectively build something amazing for a community of people who love a particular topic.
- gbog 15y ago
  Science in the small is an oxymoron, I guess. Any scientific issue start with a good question that has no straightforward answer.
smsm42 15y ago
I do not think "no discussion" rule is enforced to mean no any discussion at all. I have routinely seen and participated in discussing merits of certain answers, and nobody minded. The premise is however that there is a right answer to the question and it is knowable and findable, not just a matter of opinion that can be debated endlessly. Yes, some questions do not fit - but many questions that are complicated enough for me that I could not find it by myself without wasting a lot of time - do fit. Documentation is very different format - it usually shows you what tools you have, but not how to use them. Compare "here's a hammer, it is used to drive in nails" to "how do I hammer in a nail that is slightly crooked into a concrete wall?" or "Can I put a nail into a porcelain tile without breaking it?". The docs probably won't answer such questions.
EvilTerran 15y ago
Likewise. I usually only end up searching the web-in-general for answers when the product documentation doesn't help. When that's led me to stackexchange, more often than not the threads asking my exact question have been closed as "too general" or similar. The most recent example, in my case, was: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10166086/good-examples-of-php-code-for-an-intermediate-phper http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10166086/good-examples-of... "Can anybody recommend some [PHP] programs for me to look at, that promote best practises, but are simple enough for me to understand?" "closed as not a real question; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. [no it's not] This question is ambiguous [nope], vague [no], incomplete [er, no], overly broad [no], or rhetorical [still no] and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form [no again]. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it [mmm, passive-agression]." ... er, WTF guys? Given the minefield that is trying to write good PHP, it's a very good question. A couple of good answers had, I note, already been given, which puts the lie to the mods' reasoning -- but they killed it off anyway, even though it was showing promise? Really? Reeks of power-tripping or jobsworthy moderation to me.
- robbles 15y ago
  In my opinion, that IS an ambiguous question. Not in the sense that it's hard to understand approximately what you're looking for, but that it's not obvious how to choose the right answers. I agree that this kind of moderation can be a bit heavy-handed, but I think one of the goals of SO is to have provably correct solutions to questions, not an "answer wiki" like Quora. You can't really "accept the right answer" to this question in any fair way.
  - EvilTerran 15y ago
    I wouldn't say "ambiguous". I'll grant you "subjective". Does stackexchange forbid questions where there's an element of opinion, because the system's set up only for questions with "one right answer"? That seems awfully restrictive in the name of a system limitation. Especially as, as 4ad observed, the asker chooses an incorrect answer annoyingly often -- so the "best answer" isn't always actually the best. As such, it's advisable to at least flick through the other answers anyway, despite this rule.
excuse-me 15y ago
stackexchange is to solve problems not answer questions. Can a dog have the Bhudda nature - is a good question but it's not really a problem. How do I connect to a wifi network without an SSID in Ubuntu is a problem - even if it is a less good question
- jrgifford 15y ago
  Nope, we're here to answer questions. Can a dog have the Buddha nature is argumentative, and as far as I know would be off-topic since there is no Buddha site. However, "Can a dog be saved and go to heaven" would be closer to being on-topic, since there is a christianity.se. Make sense?
crumblan 15y ago
Once you are asking questions beyond a certain level at SO it is impossible to get a correct answer; instead you will get conjectures from people who don't know what they are doing.
- d0mine 15y ago
  I saw authors, maintainers of some projects answer questions related to their projects on SO.

by 4ad 15y ago

pierreten 15y ago

Go fuck yourself

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bp_ 15y ago

SE is not meant to be a replacement for reddit or traditional forums. If you want to have discussion by all means have discussion. Just don't do it on SE because SE wasn't made for discussion. Just because echo doesn't read from files doesn't mean it's useless. If you need to read from files you just use cat instead. Sure, you can coerce both to do the other's job, but it'll be messy and only work half the time and other people will be annoyed at you. Different solutions for different needs.

SteveJS 15y ago
It's not the software it's the community. Here's the exact same software with a community that tolerates a list: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples That said the community+software is good at what it does. I can be sad it's intolerant of lists without needing to disparage it further.
- bp_ 15y ago
  It's really the software. It isn't made to host lists. Votes on lists are historically on the item (OMG YES JQUERY!!!!!), not on the answer (You should use jQuery because a. b. c. d.), and that isn't how the rest of the site works. Besides in a Q&A network, a "list question" has "list answers" where every "answer" is a "list", rather than an item of that list. Even that doesn't really work because that's not historically the way the site is actually used. See also the following for the rationale: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-an...
dbecker 15y ago
The problem is that the quality of participants/knowledge on the discussion sites simply isn't as good as SE. No knock on SE. Quite the opposite. But I frequently have questions that aren't SE style questions, and I wish I knew where to take them for such intelligent and informed responses.
- kmontrose 15y ago
  The theory (a very sound one, based on internal observation) is that the strict "answers, not discussion" format is what attracts and retains high quality participants. I really strongly believe that it's an either/or proposition, you either get discussion or you get quality answers to questions. Discussion "sucks the air out", so to speak. And since there are already so many places for discussion on the internet, it's better for us to focus on Q&A.

fayden 15y ago

When you go to the public pool, you don't complain about not being able to play golf, do you? StackExchange is a Q&A community website. Although sometimes discussion would be appreciated, it is not what it was meant for. And by all means, if you find an accepted answer to be wrong, downvote and comment it! The whole point of StackExchange websites is to rate questions and answers!

melling 15y ago
I think the person is simply frustrated because he realizes that StackExchange could be so much better. I quit a few years ago when they changed all question upvotes to be only worth 5 points, but rejoined about a year and a half ago because it's still the best existing option. When asking questions, I try to make them good enough so that other people will find them useful in the future, and it's great when I get a like-minded answer. Some examples: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9708945/how-to-embed-a-nestedlist-in-a-tabpanel http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9708945/how-to-embed-a-ne... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10252440/changing-the-detail-container-in-a-nestedlist http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10252440/changing-the-det... Still, I think StackOverflow could be taken up a notch to allow more collaboration and organization. Also, wouldn't it be great to be able to provide runnable source code in some sort of git archive? For some languages like Javascript the code in the questions/answers could be in something like http://jsfiddle.net http://jsfiddle.net Ideally, a group of people could pick any topic and essentially write several books (beginner and advanced) by asking lots of questions. At least that was my initial belief. Say, for example, you wanted to learn elisp, and you typed: "Hello world in emacs", well I've got that answered: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-world-in-emacs http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-wor... I didn't quite get a book with Elisp, but I did throw down quite a few breadcrumbs: CGI: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532311/cgi-programming-in-elisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532311/cgi-programming-i... AWK Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2260294/awk-print-2-1-in-emacs-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2260294/awk-print-2-1-in-... Extract URLs: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642184/extracting-urls-from-an-emacs-buffer http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642184/extracting-urls-f... Parse CSV/Gen HTML: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541682/lisp-script-to-parse-csv-and-generate-html-table http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541682/lisp-script-to-pa... Wrap Selection like Textmate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1558178/wrap-selection-in-open-close-tag-like-textmate http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1558178/wrap-selection-in... MySql (Unanswered): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-from-elisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-fro... Generate a Quiz: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz-in-emacs-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz... Open Browser: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-from-elisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1532365/mysql-queries-fro... Generate a Quiz (Common Lisp): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz-in-common-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2115341/sorting-buffer-lines-by-a-field http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2115341/sorting-buffer-li... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2358604/convert-decimal-hex http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2358604/convert-decimal-h... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170120/operating-on-multiple-lists http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170120/operating-on-mult...

codinghorror 15y ago

Discussion is only tolerated insofar as it allows refinement (and editing for improvement) of the question and the answers. Discussion in and of itself is not the goal; getting a verifiably great answer to your question -- even if you didn't ask it -- is! At Stack Exchange, we do science in the small. Bite-size, fun-size units of science that shouldn't feel like work, but collectively build something amazing for a community of people who love a particular topic.

gbog 15y ago
Science in the small is an oxymoron, I guess. Any scientific issue start with a good question that has no straightforward answer.

smsm42 15y ago

I do not think "no discussion" rule is enforced to mean no any discussion at all. I have routinely seen and participated in discussing merits of certain answers, and nobody minded. The premise is however that there is a right answer to the question and it is knowable and findable, not just a matter of opinion that can be debated endlessly. Yes, some questions do not fit - but many questions that are complicated enough for me that I could not find it by myself without wasting a lot of time - do fit. Documentation is very different format - it usually shows you what tools you have, but not how to use them. Compare "here's a hammer, it is used to drive in nails" to "how do I hammer in a nail that is slightly crooked into a concrete wall?" or "Can I put a nail into a porcelain tile without breaking it?". The docs probably won't answer such questions.

EvilTerran 15y ago

Likewise. I usually only end up searching the web-in-general for answers when the product documentation doesn't help. When that's led me to stackexchange, more often than not the threads asking my exact question have been closed as "too general" or similar. The most recent example, in my case, was: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10166086/good-examples-of-php-code-for-an-intermediate-phper http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10166086/good-examples-of... "Can anybody recommend some [PHP] programs for me to look at, that promote best practises, but are simple enough for me to understand?" "closed as not a real question; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. [no it's not] This question is ambiguous [nope], vague [no], incomplete [er, no], overly broad [no], or rhetorical [still no] and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form [no again]. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it [mmm, passive-agression]." ... er, WTF guys? Given the minefield that is trying to write good PHP, it's a very good question. A couple of good answers had, I note, already been given, which puts the lie to the mods' reasoning -- but they killed it off anyway, even though it was showing promise? Really? Reeks of power-tripping or jobsworthy moderation to me.

robbles 15y ago
In my opinion, that IS an ambiguous question. Not in the sense that it's hard to understand approximately what you're looking for, but that it's not obvious how to choose the right answers. I agree that this kind of moderation can be a bit heavy-handed, but I think one of the goals of SO is to have provably correct solutions to questions, not an "answer wiki" like Quora. You can't really "accept the right answer" to this question in any fair way.
- EvilTerran 15y ago
  I wouldn't say "ambiguous". I'll grant you "subjective". Does stackexchange forbid questions where there's an element of opinion, because the system's set up only for questions with "one right answer"? That seems awfully restrictive in the name of a system limitation. Especially as, as 4ad observed, the asker chooses an incorrect answer annoyingly often -- so the "best answer" isn't always actually the best. As such, it's advisable to at least flick through the other answers anyway, despite this rule.

excuse-me 15y ago

stackexchange is to solve problems not answer questions. Can a dog have the Bhudda nature - is a good question but it's not really a problem. How do I connect to a wifi network without an SSID in Ubuntu is a problem - even if it is a less good question

jrgifford 15y ago
Nope, we're here to answer questions. Can a dog have the Buddha nature is argumentative, and as far as I know would be off-topic since there is no Buddha site. However, "Can a dog be saved and go to heaven" would be closer to being on-topic, since there is a christianity.se. Make sense?

crumblan 15y ago

Once you are asking questions beyond a certain level at SO it is impossible to get a correct answer; instead you will get conjectures from people who don't know what they are doing.

d0mine 15y ago
I saw authors, maintainers of some projects answer questions related to their projects on SO.