Why is the question regarding mentoring closed?

Question

I am referring to this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? .

I was asked to take this question to Parenting SE or Professional Matters SE, because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.

First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet.

Also, I was asked to refer to this meta answer for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice.

AND if the career-related site didn't get created there would be no place for my question to go to, which makes the SE rather "incomplete".

Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive.

Answer 1

A few, quick clarifications:

• You weren't told to take it to Professional Matters: I suggested that you might be interested in the proposal, which aims to cover workplace questions of a more general nature.
• Likewise, you weren't told to take it to Parenting either: an active user on Parenting suggested to me that this question had some good, general advice that might be related to your situation, and it was added as a comment.

To quote from the answer I linked:

[T]here are a great many things about careers that are applicable to any job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the value Stack Exchange brings to the Q&A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.

We're not a general purpose career site: we never have been, and we never will be. For the past 18 months, we've always been about questions requiring the unique experience of those in software development. It's worked out pretty well for us so far.

However, I think everyone acknowledges that there is a pent-up demand for a Q&A site for more general workplace questions, which is why the Professional Matters site proposal was created. The way we get to a point where general professional questions are accepted on Stack Exchange is to commit to and promote that proposal, not redefining a random site on the network that superficially looks similar to the expertise required to answer such questions.

So if you want to ask general professional questions, I strongly encourage you to support Professional Matters. It's highly unlikely it won't ever be created, but it'll be created a whole lot sooner if people—such as yourself—who are interested in the topic commit to it and help build critical mass for it.

Answer 2

I think the other answers, especially Mark's and Yannis's hit most of the points, but I'd just like to weigh in on two things.

Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers.

By allowing questions about things that are relevant to more than just software development professionals, we are creating a major problem. It becomes more difficult for the software development professionals to find answers to questions.

Let's take an example of teamwork. If I'm a software project manager or technical lead, I might be interested in how to manage my team in the context of something like Scrum or RUP to maximize quality and improve on-time delivery, or how implementing a specific change to my development process will influence my team's productivity or defect injection rate. If there were lots of questions about generic teamwork, it would become that much harder for me to search this site to find out if my question had been answered and get to those answers.

Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.

You don't dump tangentially related questions on a Stack Exchange site because they are "close enough" and then move them later. You let each community focus on its expertise and only its expertise. As the demand for something arises, a new site is proposed, members of existing communities can come together to stand it up, and new experts, practitioners, and curious individuals can be brought in from outside the network to create a new and vibrant community.

Answer 3

First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet.

Parenting.SE is still in beta, which means that it's still forming. You should ask a Meta question there and ask the community if they want the question or not. Even if they don't want it, they will most probably give you feedback on how to reformulate and re-ask it there.

Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers.

Restricting the scope of Programmers.SE to questions that only apply uniquely to our professional fields is a decision that the community took a while ago. Although many disagree with it, there is little point in restarting the debate, especially since it was a decision that was encouraged by the powers that be.

Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.

We have absolutely no way to tell if Professional Matters will make it to beta, and if it does, we cannot predict that the question will be on topic there at that time.

Area51 proposals are just that; they are shaped during their Area51 lifetime, and they might end up being a completely different site than originally intended. Case in point, well, Programmers.SE. Check out the proposal, to get an idea how many things changed along the way.

Answer 4

welcome to the void of good questions semi related to programming that have no home on the network.

It exists not everyone likes that it exists, but powers greater than I decided it should exist.

Answer 5

Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive.

This statement is just wrong. Would you expect a question that was off topic on Stack Overflow to remain open until an Area 51 site launched? What holds for one site on the network holds for all sites on the network. An off-topic question gets closed and ultimately deleted. We can't make exceptions.

NOTE: I'm not addresses the question of whether this question is on topic or not here.