31
Frankly, I think that you are off base. Or at least your "change enforcement" is too thinly scoped.
No amount of name changing or scope massaging or helpful blurbs will fix the community.
As it stands, we have a fairly insular group of regulars who view questions as something to vet - things to protect the site from. We reliably have purges where old, ...
30
This is one of those cases where people phrase a question in a way that disguises their true intent. They are not asking for a tutorial on persuasive speaking. They are seeking a deeper understanding of the subject.
Take https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/237500/3965 for example. His real problem is not lack of skills of persuasion. He has ...
20
There are two answers to your question: how the site theoretically works, and how it actually works in practice. In theory, the border is that questions should have answers that are supportable by objective statements, and aren't purely a matter of taste.
In practice, the border is much more strict than that. The first reason is that voters are often not ...
16
A good rule of thumb for these types of questions is "would the question be acceptable if it were about the quote itself, and not about what the creator of the quote meant?"
So, "Does BASIC mentally mutilate programmers beyond hope of regeneration?" would, clearly, not be an acceptable question.
"Is Perl broken by design?" is also pretty clearly opinion ...
15
Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.
Change Name is BAD because it was already rejected by SE top brass and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.
Add Sub-title is GOOD providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less ...
13
For what it's worth, I voted to reopen. I don't think questions should be evaluated on the asker knowing if there's a single canonical answer a priori. If most standard libraries you're aware of call it either f or op, say so. If the answer is, "there isn't any convention so choose whatever you want," then let that be the answer. Don't close the question....
13
A good interview question does not have an answer that the candidate knows; the candidate is expected to be able to discuss different options, with some options being thrown in by the interviewer.
The questions is asked to find out how (or if) the candidate thinks, not to get an answer to the asked question.
On SE sites questions are asked to get answers ...
13
This is difficult. I see a few bounds on when a question is acceptable:
A question should seek for solutions, not opinions. For example, consider a hypothetical question
I am considering solution A or solution B. Context is this and that. Which solution is better?
Answer: Obviously the one with fluffy kittens.
The question could be made more concrete ...
10
Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page as quickly as possible, so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions. Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question ...
10
There are several reasons why this question is not a good fit.
First, we do not accept research or resource request questions. We are not a search engine. We are not librarians. We, as a community, do not go and find documents or quotes or references for you. Asking us to go out and find a design rationale is off-topic as a resource request.
Second, we do ...
9
You can ask an actual question.
The question you posted reads more like a blog entry or essay (you even include a conclusion paragraph). It's a wall of text that requires extensive analysis just to determine what your subject matter is. That doesn't really scale well on a question and answer site.
In short, get to the point, quickly and succinctly. We ...
9
No you are not wrong to vote to close.
If you look at the dates when the moderators last interacted with the question you'll see that it was quite a while ago now - certainly before the "software recommendations" close reason came into force, and at a time when we thought such questions were OK.
The need for that close reason is apparent as there was a new ...
8
I agree with you that it is silly to have a string of duplicates ultimately leading to something offtopic. That doesn't do the user any services by looking at it and thinking
Well these kinds of questions are okay here, but this one just so happens to have been asked before.
Keep in mind that things like this do sometimes happen as a function over time. ...
8
This was somewhat exceptional, as a few weird things were at play. I'd like to answer your question twice, first speaking to this specific incident, and then in a more general sense.
The question was originally asked on Stack Overflow (now deleted) and migrated here, then rejected as folks were working on it and then finally unlocked (but closed) which is ...
8
Stack Exchange sites are for answering specific questions that can be backed up with some combination of facts and experiences, not discussing ideas. Asking people for their opinions or thoughts on a subject or carrying out an extended discussion.
The question you linked to is very clearly a poll. It's not about solving a problem or understanding a topic:
...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
