Background
Mark Trapp closed this question on the licensure of software engineers on Programmers for the reason of not being constructive. More recently, another question about replacing XML with JSON was closed for the same reasons. In the comments of both, he called it a "hypothetical question" and cited the FAQ. I believe that the ultimate problem lies in the definition of hypothetical and practical.
The text of the notice for non-constructive questions states:
All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.
I think we can agree that open-ended discussion questions, "getting to know you" questions, and questions asking for predicting the future aren't practical, answerable, or of educational value and are more suited to other forums. And there are plenty of questions like this, such as trying to figure out, the next big language, what features C# will add in the next version, or what terminology you use to refer to the { character. We, as developers, don't know what the next big language is going to be, or what features the next version will have until the creator(s) tell us, and it really doesn't matter that I call { the open-stache and you call it the open brace. Questions like these should be closed, and I think we can all agree on that.
However, I think we need to come to terms, as a community, with what is practical, answerable, and of some educational value. We also need to discuss the balance between the three of them. I think that all questions have to be answerable, but how does an individual (or even a subset) decide what is practical or of educational value to the community at large.
Practicality
For practicality, how do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical?
For example, I just pulled this decent question on MS SQL XML best practices from the home page. This is practical to people who are working with MSSQL and XML, but it's not practical to me in my job (I'm currently doing Java development with some MySQL database work here and there) nor in my professional interests (I'm interested in the softer topics of software engineering). Should I vote to close it because it's not practical to me? No, because it's practical to a reasonable subset of software developers out there (meaning it's not localized to a particular geographic area, period in time, or individual).
Just take a look at my profile to see what I'm referring to:
My professional interests include software project management, software engineering process models and methodologies, software measurements and metrics, empirical software engineering, leadership, and professionalism in software engineering.
There are entire academic disciplines and research areas devoted to these, and the four are specific to software engineering. Questions and answers on these topics are practical, to me. But also, practicality is different depending on context. For example, empirical software engineering isn't necessarily practiced across industry, but it has led to insights into techniques and tools used to develop software better. For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to delivered software, or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?
Answerability
What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable?
I think we can all agree that questions must be answerable in some way. There are clearly unanswerable questions (especially those asking to predict the future, or career planning advice that's incredibly localized to a person's current state), but there are also questions that we can draw on experiences and outside knowledge to answer. Going back to this licensure question, I think we can consider Steve McConnell (among others) an expert and cite his work, and we can look at other professions that require licensure and look at what happened there to draw conclusions.
The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any "answer" provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares? - Mark Trapp
I don't entirely agree with that. If I have a question, chances are, I don't know everything that's been written or how answerable the question is. I might have read a book or a blog post or talked to a co-worker about something. I think that the ability to present an expert's theory (which, if you can substantiate it, might be your own theory) in response to a question is perfectly acceptable, as long as you provide a summary or short quotation and a citation so that the original source can be found.
If you need a time machine or crystal ball to answer the question, that means that the question should be closed. However, if you can provide well-educated guesses based on experiences, knowledge, and reputable sources, that's perfectly acceptable, in my opinion.
From Good Subjective, Bad Subjective:
In fact, most academic fields don’t have objective answers. Topics like economics, engineering, the arts, literature, and social sciences don’t exactly have correct and incorrect answers. There is a growing list of proposals about increasingly subjective topics, and we believe many of them are going to make great Stack Exchange sites!
Educational Value
How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?
I'm not sure about other people, but I had to learn about software engineering professionalism and ethics as part of my undergraduate curriculum. In fact, we had a discussion about licensure and/or certification and their value. I think specific, pointed questions about industry trends are good questions to learn from, especially for people who have 30+ years left to spend in it. The opportunity to stay current on topics I learned about 4-5 years ago is valuable to me, and clearly adds educational value. At least 5 people (4 + the author) appeared to learn something from my answer to the licensure question, too.
Questions
How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?
If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?
What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?
How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?
Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?
EDIT: @Thomas Owens made several great points in this post. Now that @Mark Trapp is gone, we might want to reevaluate some of his unilateral closures. If I see any, I'll bring them up on Meta.
