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When programmers came about, SO (StackOverflow) was already a well-established site for technical questions. It has a hard line on questions that are difficult

When programmers came about, SO (StackOverflow) was already a well-established site for technical questions. It has a hard line on questions that are difficult to answer directly, either with simple logic or code, or references. Programmers was created (or so it seemed) with a similar goal, but for not directly technical questions. Typically things that are too high-level and not detailed enough for SO end up there, e.g. questions about architecture, design patterns or paradigms (and many others). What seems to have changed is that the moderation policy has become ever more to the letter, closing any question which doesn't seem to fit the site. The problem with this is that most of the policy (the "FAQ") is in line with that of SO, where it works great. I honestly don't think that high-level, architectural questions can be answered in a 100% correct way; they are often too fuzzy, involving trade-offs that are different for different organisations and people. So basically, if any question comes along which has no single "correct" answer, it is likely to be closed. This is a bit of a problem, because I for one would love to read about the (highly educated and refined) opinions of some great developers. Apparently that isn't allowed, however, only "facts".

ErrantX 14y ago
This is exactly what happened to Literature.SE and a couple of other sites I dipped into (although Lit.SE was my most active, and I was in the top 10 users there before it closed). The moderation was harsh and it led to questions being mundane, tedious or boring - and a race to get the "right answer" in (with little effort on quality). Opinion was stamped on and it was clear that SE was looking for mindless answer-drones and not a community with opinions and views. Unsurprisingly, Lit.SE died a death after less than a year.
- Shog9 14y ago
  More discussion of Lit.SE here: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/131397/why-did-literature-fail http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/131397/why-did-liter...
kamaal 14y ago
Actually their motto is to make it a question and answer site and not a discussion site. The issue with that is, the answers that follow depend on the question. If the question cannot be answered as a clear cut fact then an discussion is inevitable. Also some questions by their very nature attract discussions and they turn out to be the most interesting ones. As somebody else also mentioned, some topics just can't have a clear factual answer like religion, literature etc. The problem with factual answers is, there is only that much you can do with general problems that everyone face. Once those questions(problems which every one face generally) are answered, your site turns to a knowledge repository. And then the site traffic greatly depends on specific problems faced by people and most generally nobody else gets interested in those.
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  That rationale makes sense for Stack Overflow. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for Programmers Stack Exchange, which is supposed to be for the "big questions".
yrizos 14y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a Programmers moderator. The original version of Programmers was called "Not Programming Related", and it was created as a site for anything and everything that didn't fit Stack Overflow (What's your favourite programming cartoon, etc). What you are describing is actually the current scope, that seems to be working just fine. You're right that questions that fit within the site's scope rarely have a definitive answer, but a definitive answer is not what we are looking for, just a finite and somewhat limited set of good/great answers. Here's a few recent example questions that probably explain what the site's about better than I could ever: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-f... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-ca... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critique-of-the-io-monad-being-viewed-as-a-state-monad-operating-on-the-world http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critiq... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experience-of-pythons-pep-302-new-import-hooks http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experi... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-have-languages-influenced-cpu-design http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-ha... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-in... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-bos... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-s... None of these questions would make it on Stack Overflow, and that's the gap Programmers is filling.
- danielbarla 14y ago
guelo 14y ago
It wasn't just the moderation policy, the actual purpose of the site was changed from anything "Not Programming Related" to "conceptual questions about software development". That led to moderators shutting down the active community that had formed around career development, office politics, equipment, etc.

ErrantX 14y ago

This is exactly what happened to Literature.SE and a couple of other sites I dipped into (although Lit.SE was my most active, and I was in the top 10 users there before it closed). The moderation was harsh and it led to questions being mundane, tedious or boring - and a race to get the "right answer" in (with little effort on quality). Opinion was stamped on and it was clear that SE was looking for mindless answer-drones and not a community with opinions and views. Unsurprisingly, Lit.SE died a death after less than a year.

Shog9 14y ago
More discussion of Lit.SE here: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/131397/why-did-literature-fail http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/131397/why-did-liter...

kamaal 14y ago

Actually their motto is to make it a question and answer site and not a discussion site. The issue with that is, the answers that follow depend on the question. If the question cannot be answered as a clear cut fact then an discussion is inevitable. Also some questions by their very nature attract discussions and they turn out to be the most interesting ones. As somebody else also mentioned, some topics just can't have a clear factual answer like religion, literature etc. The problem with factual answers is, there is only that much you can do with general problems that everyone face. Once those questions(problems which every one face generally) are answered, your site turns to a knowledge repository. And then the site traffic greatly depends on specific problems faced by people and most generally nobody else gets interested in those.

bryanlarsen 14y ago
That rationale makes sense for Stack Overflow. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for Programmers Stack Exchange, which is supposed to be for the "big questions".

yrizos 14y ago

Disclaimer: I'm a Programmers moderator. The original version of Programmers was called "Not Programming Related", and it was created as a site for anything and everything that didn't fit Stack Overflow (What's your favourite programming cartoon, etc). What you are describing is actually the current scope, that seems to be working just fine. You're right that questions that fit within the site's scope rarely have a definitive answer, but a definitive answer is not what we are looking for, just a finite and somewhat limited set of good/great answers. Here's a few recent example questions that probably explain what the site's about better than I could ever: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-f... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-ca... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critique-of-the-io-monad-being-viewed-as-a-state-monad-operating-on-the-world http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critiq... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experience-of-pythons-pep-302-new-import-hooks http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experi... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-have-languages-influenced-cpu-design http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-ha... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-in... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-bos... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-s... None of these questions would make it on Stack Overflow, and that's the gap Programmers is filling.

danielbarla 14y ago

guelo 14y ago

It wasn't just the moderation policy, the actual purpose of the site was changed from anything "Not Programming Related" to "conceptual questions about software development". That led to moderators shutting down the active community that had formed around career development, office politics, equipment, etc.