How to ask for a list of usable criteria

Question

In this post, I've asked for a list of criteria I can use to make a correct choice for a programming environment.

I received some pretty useless comments, and then, apparently after not more than 25 views, my question has been closed (as needing more focus), but on top of that, it has been deleted, which makes it even impossible to add more focus to the question.

THIS IS INCREDIBLY HARSH: on this site I have earned a 1000+ reputation, on similar sites even a multiple of this, so I'm not just some spammer!

So, if the question about how to choose between a list of programming languages is not desired here, please inform me which Stack Exchange site I can use for getting my question answered.

Answer 1

Glorfindel's answer addresses why "list of" questions tend to be closed and deleted.

As far as deletion goes, that does not make it impossible to add focus to the question. You can still see it, edit it, and then flag it for moderator review. If you don't know how to improve it, you can ask for specific advice on Meta for how to improve it.

It's one of our community standard practices for moderators to delete questions that are not likely to be improved or can likely only be improved by the original asker. This practice makes sure that questions that aren't a good fit can't be used as an example of questions to ask here, which has been done to the point of being problematic.

Answer 2

The main reason to close the question was probably what Glorfindel already wrote.

But let me add that the whole topic of choosing "the best programming language" is problematic, especially for this site. Questions which make the assumption that a programming language can be chosen by objective criteria are prone to get downvotes and delete-votes.

In my experience, besides indisputable platform restrictions, the 99% real-world criterion for picking a programming language is what the developer or the team actually likes and knows. You may believe this or not, but I am for a very long time in this business and I think I know what I am talking of. Sure, one cannot solve every specific problem with every exotic language, but most favorite mainstream languages are suitable for a huge range of tasks. So the whole topic is very, very opinionated. For the same reasons we do not recommend programming languages on this site.

So regardless of what Thomas Owens wrote I currently don't see how this question could be salvaged easily by a rewording. If it does not end up to be closed as "needs more focus", it would probably be closed as "too opinionated".

Answer 3

I can't see your question, because I don't have the 10k reputation necessary to view deleted posts. But in general questions asking for 'a list of things' are not a good fit for any Stack Exchange site, for the same reasons as pure shopping questions:

• They are open-ended; there is never one perfect answer to them.
• They become outdated incredibly quickly. This was what turned me against shopping list questions: if you look around on Stack Overflow for example, you will find plenty of 2010 "what's the best xyz" questions whose answers are hideously outdated now.

In general, those questions fare better on Quora or Reddit; conversely, 'narrow' questions tend to get better answers here.