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I call Betteridge's Law on this. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines ]
by sedev 14y ago
I call Betteridge's Law on this. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines ]
Stack Overflow has a fairly specific rubric for judging questions, and a central part of it is the requirement that they have a single verifiably correct answer. The example question does not, and it runs afoul of the guidelines in multiple other ways. The example question is something for a conventional discussion board or mailing list - it's not a good Stack Overflow question.
- genwin 14y agoIn my experience there's rarely a single verifiable correct answer for a programming question that one can't easily find the answer to without asking (outside of SO). Also, whereas you're like the fourth person here to say the questions must have a single answer, that requirement is not called out in the SO guidelines at http://stackoverflow.com/faq http://stackoverflow.com/faq. The closest I see there is "You should only ask practical, answerable questions". A question asking for pros/cons of storing images in a database (vs. links to files) meets that criterion in my book.
- Spooky23 14y agoIf you really care enough about this to understand the background, check out the old Stackoverflow podcasts: https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4 https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4 (They have decent transcripts there) Jeff & Joel talk about the concept of what makes a good question a few times -- the way they got to there is interesting and worth listening too. Actually, the whole series of podcasts is an interesting view into the thoughts of founders starting a company.