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The question you're asking is designed to solicit answers or opinions on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

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1096 votes
13 answers
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Open letter to students with homework problems

It is September once again (today is the 8755th day of September), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and SoftwareEngineering.SE. We start seeing questions ...
user avatar
187 votes
3 answers
7k views

I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites

I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites, effective today. I didn't make this decision lightly, frivolously or suddenly. A persistent pattern of corporate missteps, and a ...
Robert Harvey's user avatar
143 votes
2 answers
9k views

What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow? [duplicate]

What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?
137 votes
6 answers
3k views

It's official! Programmers is now Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Awww yeah. WOoooooooOOOOoooOOOOOoooT! PARTY TIME. Check out that domain name and logo! Thanks Stack Exchange :-) If you see any problems anywhere, please leave an answer to this question so we can ...
enderland's user avatar
  • 12.1k
132 votes
10 answers
4k views

New Site Name and Scope Proposals

From Ana, a Stack Exchange Community Manager in the previous question about changing the site name: It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and here's where we stand on your ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 79.3k
124 votes
3 answers
11k views

What goes on Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers)? A guide for Stack Overflow

Moderator Note: Programmers changed its name recently to Software Engineering. This post has been updated to reflect the new scope, but it still refers to Programmers for historical reasons. Wherever ...
user avatar
84 votes
16 answers
4k views

Are you still confused about what Programmers (now called Software Engineering) is for?

I'm going to try and keep this short, because a lot of it has already been discussed. If you are interested in the history, you can find it here on Programmers Meta, but here's a very brief recap: ...
Robert Harvey's user avatar
82 votes
3 answers
10k views

How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?

One of the not infrequently asked questions that shows up on Software Engineering.SE is along the lines of: I am trying to explain the differences between a NoSQL database and a relational database ...
user avatar
81 votes
15 answers
2k views

Site Design, round 2 [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: New Design Launched First, I want to thank you for your valuable feedback for the first design concept. Programmers.SE is a site about people and conceptual design more than ...
Jin's user avatar
  • 409
73 votes
9 answers
2k views

Follow-Up 2: New Site Name and Scope Proposals

After a discussion today (July 22nd) with Ana and Shog9, we've made some more progress toward a new site name and scope. You can check out the transcript for the full details, but we talked about the ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 79.3k
64 votes
1 answer
9k views

Where to start?

Often the question shows up of something along the lines of: I'm trying to learn language XYZ. Where should I start? or I'm trying to do ${very large project}. Where should I start? Why are ...
user avatar
57 votes
5 answers
2k views

Renaming the site to match its FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?

This site is called programmers.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about "conceptual questions about software development". Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or ...
Rachel's user avatar
  • 23.9k
56 votes
1 answer
2k views

What is this "Software Engineering" site you speak of, and what kinds of questions can I ask there?

Programmers has changed its name. Why has this name change occurred? Has anything else changed? What kinds of questions will I be able to ask, now that the name has changed?
Robert Harvey's user avatar
53 votes
5 answers
1k views

Congratulations, Anna Lear!

Good news, everyone! Everyone's favorite Programmers mod, Anna Lear, has joined the Stack Exchange Team as a Community Manager, where she'll be working her magic across the network. Anna's been an ...
user avatar
50 votes
5 answers
2k views

Are you guys turning P.SE into a 404 black hole?

I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to (not spam or such) ...
Martin Ba's user avatar
  • 7,363
50 votes
4 answers
911 views

Moderators: stop deleting benign comments!

OK, I'm going to escalate this to a formal complaint. The active deletion of comments that are not harmful to the site has to stop. Under this answer, there was a brief but meaningful dialog in the ...
Robert Harvey's user avatar
48 votes
3 answers
5k views

On the troubles of naming and terminology

Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming. There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors. It has been repeatedly revisited on meta ...
user avatar
48 votes
1 answer
28k views

Why is "Is it possible to..." a poorly worded question?

A lot of questions try to cast a net into sea of possible designs with the wording "is it possible to...". These questions often get closed for one reason or another. What steps should I take to try ...
user avatar
47 votes
1 answer
2k views

Do we have any responsibility to take any action if someone says they're thinking about suicide in their post?

There's a post that was closed as off-topic, which it is. It's a rant, one that definitely doesn't fit within the scope of our site. The author of the post mentions he's contemplating suicide. Is ...
jmort253's user avatar
  • 9,317
47 votes
3 answers
3k views

What is the history behind the site scope change from NPR to "conceptual questions about software development"?

How did the topic of this site to change from "Not-Programming-Related" to "conceptual questions about software development"? I've tried looking through meta questions to find where the change in ...
Rachel's user avatar
  • 23.9k
46 votes
11 answers
22k views

Why was my question closed or down voted?

Help! My question was closed (or down voted). Why? And what can I do about it? Downvoted Duplicate Off topic What technology to take up next Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper,...
45 votes
4 answers
1k views

I'm not a software engineer, right?

So programmers.se is going to become software-engineering.se? This means I still can't ask the burning questions about proper potted plants for programmers.... AND THAT IS OK BY ME But, I do have ...
Peter Turner's user avatar
  • 6,897
44 votes
10 answers
7k views

The Six Subjective Question Guidelines -- Enforcement Notice

Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing these six subjective question guidelines. Great subjective questions... inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”. tend to ...
Jeff Atwood's user avatar
  • 6,757
43 votes
9 answers
1k views

New logo for Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Changing this site from the increasingly anachronistic "Programmers" to the more fitting "Software Engineering" has been... A long road. So far, we've discussed... ...the name ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 8,083
43 votes
3 answers
1k views

Where can I have subjective discussions about programming?

I entered Softwareengineering Stack Exchange and unfortunately, it wasn't what I was looking for. I expected you would be able to talk about all kinds of programming, but the rules are much stricter ...
user avatar
42 votes
6 answers
3k views

On discussions and why they don't make good questions

I'll start off with the irony of this question being tagged with a discussion and point out that meta is different. Why don't discussion questions work in Stack Exchange? What is it about the ...
user avatar
40 votes
1 answer
2k views

Where does my git question go?

You've got a question about git. Its not uncommon, lots of people have questions about git. But where should the question be asked?
user avatar
38 votes
7 answers
2k views

The number of votes required to close and reopen questions is temporarily reduced . . . for science!

This experiment is over. I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward. For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be ...
Jon Ericson's user avatar
38 votes
12 answers
1k views

Why are people still mass upvoting non-answers?

I'm sorry to flog a dead horse, but I'm honestly disgusted by the conduct in the Programming Tourism question. I want to be clear about this. I would never do the kind of thing he's proposing. I'd ...
Aaronaught's user avatar
  • 43.9k
38 votes
1 answer
2k views

Asking Better Questions

Jeff Atwood post new article about Asking Better Questions. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions. if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — ...
Maniero's user avatar
  • 10.8k
37 votes
4 answers
800 views

So the site was renamed. Was it helpful?

The site was successfully renamed to SoftwareEngineering. Great. The primary goal of the name change was to make it clear what this site is about, and what is off-topic here. I'm very positive about ...
Arseni Mourzenko's user avatar
37 votes
5 answers
772 views

Can we improve our style of self-moderation for not-too-bad questions?

Over the last months and maybe years, I observed some tendency on this site of what I would call “hostile downvoting”. I see often questions which are not-too-badly written (sometimes even well-...
Doc Brown's user avatar
  • 196k
37 votes
2 answers
452 views

Question of the Week

I think we should highlight a question each week that represents the best of what we would consider the gestalt of our site, Software Engineering. Questions that are well-written, interesting, ...
Robert Harvey's user avatar
36 votes
1 answer
6k views

Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad?

I've been accused of having questions that are too blue sky-y or green fieldy and not white boardy enough. What does this mean and why do those questions get closed?
user avatar
34 votes
11 answers
2k views

How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?

One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the "crappy" ...
user avatar
34 votes
6 answers
1k views

Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love

Programmers.SE, we need to talk. We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-...
user avatar
34 votes
4 answers
534 views

How do I tell my family they need to give me more free time to get hats?

As we all know, hats are a very important part of this site. In fact, the only reason I tolerate other people on the internet is so that once a year I can spend some time earning these glorious ...
MetaFight's user avatar
  • 11.5k
34 votes
8 answers
2k views

Programmers Stack Exchange swag for top users

As a thank you for being awesome, if you are on page 1 or page 2 of … https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all … we'll be sending you a little ...
Jeff Atwood's user avatar
  • 6,757
33 votes
5 answers
4k views

Are Career Advice questions useful to anyone except the poster? [duplicate]

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-advice https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-guidance There seem to be a fair number of "should ...
AShelly's user avatar
  • 5,782
33 votes
5 answers
524 views

Follow-Up: New Site Name and Scope Proposals

I've been pondering these proposed changes to the site's name and scope for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for a new name for this site.....
Shog9's user avatar
  • 8,083
33 votes
3 answers
603 views

Great question got deleted

The deletion mafia has struck again. We had this discussion before on Meta.SO. Case in point: the question What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding? was deleted. Can ...
Konrad Rudolph's user avatar
32 votes
4 answers
8k views

Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star!

@Rachel just pointed it out this morning. Pierre 303's account is gone! What happened to him? Was he at odds with the way Stack Exchange was being run? He was an all-star! The departure of a user of ...
Jim G.'s user avatar
  • 8,004
32 votes
7 answers
2k views

Why would anyone accept an answer?

I'm looking at the questions proposed during the Area 51 process: My supervisor thinks that all If statements should include else statements. Do you agree? What are common mistakes in Software ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 79.3k
32 votes
4 answers
13k views

Programmers.SE Contest: The Complete Outline [closed]

Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? What have you been living under a rock? Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! So how will this contest ...
Dynamic's user avatar
  • 5,716
32 votes
4 answers
1k views

Why are there so many closed, on hold, and down voted questions here?

Compared to Stack Overflow, the number of questions which are down-voted, put on hold, or closed is astounding. I think it's a sign that the criteria (and possibly usefulness) of this site is poorly ...
Sam Goldberg's user avatar
  • 1,004
32 votes
2 answers
554 views

New SE Chat Bot feature for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow

There are some very creative SE users and contributors to Code Review that have used the Stack API to build an open source SE Chat bot that is currently being used for many things. https://github.com/...
maple_shaft's user avatar
  • 26.4k
31 votes
7 answers
934 views

Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?

Questions like "Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?" are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed? I see a few variants on this: Questions that are clearly ...
Fishtoaster's user avatar
  • 25.9k
30 votes
3 answers
1k views

Do we want hats? [closed]

In 2011, the Gaming Stack Exchange hosted an event called Hat Dash, where users earned "hats" for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges): Certain actions would trigger the ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 79.3k
30 votes
3 answers
551 views

Favorite questions and answers of 2015

I think we spend a bit too much time talking about what's wrong with Programmers.SE, and who is or is not to blame for it. In particular, it's probably fair to say that some of the curmudgeons active ...
Ixrec's user avatar
  • 27.6k
30 votes
3 answers
510 views

Should we have a "not subjective enough" close reason? [closed]

To delininate what makes this site different from stackoverflow.com: All questions here should be inherently subjective and unanswerable, and all the answers to said questions should be 100% based ...
Jeff Atwood's user avatar
  • 6,757

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