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My main issue with SO is the mods who close questions as "off topic" or "not fitting the site" (~), DESPITE a question having a ton of upvotes and solid answers

My main issue with SO is the mods who close questions as "off topic" or "not fitting the site" (~), DESPITE a question having a ton of upvotes and solid answers, with comments pleading to not close it. Other than that, it remains a great resource and I use it on a daily basis.

weinzierl 11y ago
I was an early member of SO. From the discussions of that time I remember that the founder put a lot of thought into how to build a good community. A community that can last. Preventing dilution and keeping focus was one important point. One consequence was being rigorous with off-topic questions, the founding of the "sister sites" (first the Trilogy SO, SF and SU then StackExchange) was another. There was much debate about what should be considered on-topic and off-topic back then. I remember the discussion about HTML and LaTeX quite vividly[1]. All of this discussion was terribly tiring but on the other hand it was good because SO was different from other communities in the sense that people tried to stay focused. I think there is still good intention behind the strictness, but I agree that the execution leaves a lot to be desired. [1] http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12918/can-we-have-a-ruling-on-latex-on-stack-overflow http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12918/can-we-have-a-...
TylerH 11y ago
Just because people like a question doesn't mean it is on-topic.
Latty 11y ago
The main issue is that a lot of the 'off-topic' rules are focused around content that doesn't work on SO. It doesn't work because it's time based - asking 'What is the best IDE for X?' is subjective and changes over time. Yes, that list of answers might be useful and interesting right now, but over time, it becomes more and more outdated and eventually, downright misleading. There is a reason SO has excellent results on Google - the content is carefully curated so that it's timeless, and editing allows it to get updated where it needs to be. Yes, sometimes good (at the time) content gets discarded, but that's the nature of it. If you want that kind of stuff, do it somewhere more transient.
- joeyespo 11y ago
  With so many people visiting SO for exactly these kinds of valuable answers, I believe SO should embrace them instead of the ongoing battle of rejecting them. If cleaning up irrelevant questions can't be automated, how about having a "this is no longer relevant" button appear a few months after the post has been answered? Or having a [subjective] tag that has an expiration date on being indexed on Google. Now that the bad ideas are out of the way, let's hear some others.
  - Latty 11y ago
    Rejecting them works better. Those questions can be answered on other sites that are more suited to a discussion format and won't end up floating on search results despite being out of date like SO's will. Trying to make SO a jack of all trades will degrade the quality of the content and make the site worse - the whole reason that it's the good source of content it is is because of these restrictions.
    - joeyespo 11y ago
      Outright rejection hurts the long-term though. People will go elsewhere to ask valuable questions, which will slowly degrade the quality by having fewer and fewer valuable questions asked. We're seeing this happen now.

weinzierl 11y ago

I was an early member of SO. From the discussions of that time I remember that the founder put a lot of thought into how to build a good community. A community that can last. Preventing dilution and keeping focus was one important point. One consequence was being rigorous with off-topic questions, the founding of the "sister sites" (first the Trilogy SO, SF and SU then StackExchange) was another. There was much debate about what should be considered on-topic and off-topic back then. I remember the discussion about HTML and LaTeX quite vividly[1]. All of this discussion was terribly tiring but on the other hand it was good because SO was different from other communities in the sense that people tried to stay focused. I think there is still good intention behind the strictness, but I agree that the execution leaves a lot to be desired. [1] http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12918/can-we-have-a-ruling-on-latex-on-stack-overflow http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12918/can-we-have-a-...

TylerH 11y ago

Just because people like a question doesn't mean it is on-topic.

Latty 11y ago

The main issue is that a lot of the 'off-topic' rules are focused around content that doesn't work on SO. It doesn't work because it's time based - asking 'What is the best IDE for X?' is subjective and changes over time. Yes, that list of answers might be useful and interesting right now, but over time, it becomes more and more outdated and eventually, downright misleading. There is a reason SO has excellent results on Google - the content is carefully curated so that it's timeless, and editing allows it to get updated where it needs to be. Yes, sometimes good (at the time) content gets discarded, but that's the nature of it. If you want that kind of stuff, do it somewhere more transient.

joeyespo 11y ago
With so many people visiting SO for exactly these kinds of valuable answers, I believe SO should embrace them instead of the ongoing battle of rejecting them. If cleaning up irrelevant questions can't be automated, how about having a "this is no longer relevant" button appear a few months after the post has been answered? Or having a [subjective] tag that has an expiration date on being indexed on Google. Now that the bad ideas are out of the way, let's hear some others.
- Latty 11y ago
  Rejecting them works better. Those questions can be answered on other sites that are more suited to a discussion format and won't end up floating on search results despite being out of date like SO's will. Trying to make SO a jack of all trades will degrade the quality of the content and make the site worse - the whole reason that it's the good source of content it is is because of these restrictions.
  - joeyespo 11y ago
    Outright rejection hurts the long-term though. People will go elsewhere to ask valuable questions, which will slowly degrade the quality by having fewer and fewer valuable questions asked. We're seeing this happen now.