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Here's a link to a question I just posted.

I wanted to understand the trade-off between WET vs DRY code better so I wrote a question about how I've never understood the WET approach to coding. The question got a score of -2 almost immediately. Why? Is the question too subjective? I'm not trying to be arrogant, I just genuinely want to know what I did wrong.

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It's probably been down-voted for the reason that you've identified: you want to start a discussion. The question-and-answer format of Stack Exchange isn't good for a general discussion. Questions do best when they are focused on a specific problem.

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  • I see. I guess I had misunderstood the purpose of the site. I though SE was more related to discussion about coding, rather than trying to solving specific problems.
    – JensB
    Commented Apr 8, 2021 at 14:44
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    @JensB Our help center defines our scope. Generally speaking, we're focused on the non-coding aspects of software development: requirements, architecture and design, quality assurance, configuration management, build and release, project management, and process. Other than that, we have similar guidelines as Stack Overflow as to what makes a good question.
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Commented Apr 8, 2021 at 14:46
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    @JensB: Thomas is surely correct, especially for this particular question. However, I think this is only half of the story. According to my observation, it has become hard to ask a question on this site without getting at least one or two downvotes for it (often without any indication why the downvoter does not like the question). IMHO this is a sign for a missing consensus in the community on how to draw the line between "good subjective" and "bad subjective" questions. So as long as a question gets as least as many upvotes as downvotes, I would not bother about the downvotes.
    – Doc Brown
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 13:57

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