The original idea was to make it a bit of a waste bin for all the softer questions which had relevance to programmers but weren't directly related to programmin

The original idea was to make it a bit of a waste bin for all the softer questions which had relevance to programmers but weren't directly related to programming. Remember the SO model takes a pretty hard line on what's relevant to try and minimise the noise and this was seen as a solution to what to do with questions which were interesting and semi-relevant but seemed too much like noise to many. After while Programmers was becoming a bit too much of a dumping ground so tightened up the rules to make it less random and chatty and more of a valid site in it's own right for topics around software development but which are not directly programming related.