Do we need a definition of subjective?

Question

It seems to me the trend in the on/off topic question really comes down to "What's subjective but not subjective to the point of pointless and/or uninteresting."

So far it seems that we're making our way trying to find good vs. bad questions and I think that's a pretty good approach. The downside is that without a definition, I think we leave ourselves open to "if asking about lighting for programmers was good, then why was asking about shoes for programmers bad?" type questions.

So, should/how do we capture this in the FAQ or elsewhere?

Answer 1

Certainly we need. This is a work in progress and will be a hard work. It seems pretty subjective say what is subjective :-)

In Beta phase some undefined is normal. We're discussing here and on meta.stackoverflow.com. Your contributions are welcome.

Answer 2

Looks like the almighty ubermods have answered this...

The Six Subjective Question Guidelines -- Enforcement Notice

Answer 3

As such questions get closed, we see discussions like these arise on the meta, reopen votes.
And exceptionally this could start over again if the question does get opened again...

So yes, we certainly need a simple definition to understand which at the same time limits clarity discussions.

As bigown stated in his own answer:

It seems pretty subjective say what is subjective :-)

So it will take some time for a perfect simple understandable definition to form.

Another example of this subjectivity can be seen in my comment on ChrisF his answer:

Sorry, but lightning isn't unique to them either...
A lawyer typing a text document at day or at night will have the exact same light issues.

I guess a large share of people not agreeing over things is what slows this discussion down.

I'm not into statistics, but it might even be that there are enough people that do want these questions
thus try their best to beautify them with subjective comments. This made me think...

If no good definition can be derived in a reasonable time. why not allow/ban them all at once?

Answer 4

Well, to take your example of lighting vs shoes, here's my take:

Lighting is OK because it affects the environment we program in, and while there will be some discussion over the details in general there is a broadly "right" set of answers.

Shoes is not OK because while bad shoes can cause problems, they don't cause problems that are specific to programmers developers. Also the answer is "buy a new pair of shoes".

So does the question raise an issue that's specific to, or affects in a specific way, software development? If so then it's OK to be asked here.

Answer 5

No, you can't have a definition for subjective. Because it's subjective. That's what troubled SO for so long, and eventually lead to the banishment of the subjective tag - no one could agree on what it meant.

Time isn't going to fix this. Discussion isn't going to fix this. Not in any reasonable time-frame at least - or it would already have been settled on SO.

If "subjectiveness" is the criteria by which questions are judged, then everyone's just going to argue that their favorites are on the low end of the scale...

...But the current arguments aren't really about "question subjectiveness" anyway. Some of the commonly-cited "good" questions are extremely subjective. The problem is that the obvious rules for separating on- and off-topic questions (strictly programming related, no GTKY/write whatever you want) exclude some rather popular questions - so instead, you get these arguments in favor of more (ahem) subjective criteria:

• "answerability"
• "utility"
• "seriousness/professionalism"
• "potential for long-term benefit to humanity"

...and those are at least as difficult to nail down as "subjective".

So to answer your second question: forget it. You're not gonna capture this in the FAQ in any useful fashion. I say we just admit this right at the start, and codify it thusly:

What kind of questions can I ask here?

Questions about things programmers care about. Good ones.

How do you know if your question is good enough for Programmers.SE? You don't. Question "goodness" is hard to define, and so we're not gonna try. But we know it when we see it, and if we don't see it, you're outa here!
Have fun...