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I just landed on Area51, and checked programmers.stackexchange description.

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So are we being unfair to close question which are related to career and indirectly related to software? Those are exactly in scope questions.

I know the FAQ says something else, the name itself says it is about programmers, the description says it is not about programming. Want to define an agenda.

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Ah, you missed the best part...

This big blue box appears above the title on Area 51

The title, description, definition questions, and discussions on Area51 are of purely historic interest. The FAQ here is the definitive reference for the site as it exists today.

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You are a year and a half too late.

When the site was first proposed it was as described on Area 51. There was a large demand for somewhere to ask all the questions that developers had that weren't related to the code in front of them on their screens.

However, it was soon clearly apparent that a site defined by what it's not isn't a good site in Stack Exchange terms. It was completed unfocused and descending into anarchy. Rather than attracting all the good not programming related questions it was attracting all the bad ones like "What's you favourite programmer cartoon?", "What chair do you have?" etc.

It was therefore decided to repurpose the site into what you see today. It didn't happen overnight and, to a certain extent, it's still happening today. However, we believe that we have a site that is useful to software developers and going back would be the wrong thing to do.

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    It is kind of strange that a site will change so drastically after going through through so many stages in the start.
    – TheTechGuy
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:54
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    @Dave When NPR/Programmers launched, the Area 51 process was not nearly as stringent as it is today. Many of the policies, rules, and what-have-you SE has today were put into place as a result of the colossal failure of NPR.
    – user8
    Mar 8, 2012 at 0:53
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    So it is not strange at all, it might need some changes once again
    – TheTechGuy
    Mar 8, 2012 at 3:52
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    @Dave Sure, sites grow and change all the time. It is some what unlikely, though, that such changes would be in the direction of what NPR started out as.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Mar 8, 2012 at 14:48

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