22
I think we should not change the scope at all.
There is no reason the sites (Law and Open Source) can't have overlapping scope with Progs. For example questions about algorithms are on topic both here and Stack Overflow.
I really don't see any reason for us to change our scope based on what other Stacks are or are not doing. We should want the questions we ...
18
The Summer of Nonsense
Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole "niceness" theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only ...
16
Question is About Finding a Development Tool For A Specific Purpose
Asking for software recommendations is on topic at Software Recommendations. However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a much higher threshold. From the ground rules and What is required for a question to contain “enough ...
9
A socket is inherently an interface that an OS provides to applications to communicate via an address, so I feel this question is relevant to a programmer. I don't see sockets as being a major concern for system administrators or network engineers but they certainly matter to software developers writing a network interface.
9
When every answer to a question is potentially equally correct - and there could conceivably be quite a few answers, there's a pretty good chance that you've started a discussion instead of asking a question (or a question that kicks off a discussion or debate). That's not always true, but it's a good way to tell when you're venturing into the land of off-...
9
Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Zizouz212, and I'm a moderator over at Open Source.
I might as well recap what we cover as site scope:
Anything libre/open-source/creative-commons licensing
Anything to do with open-source project management
Any questions that ask the community to recommend a license for a project - We allow anything that is in the esteem ...
9
No, Programmers should not make questions about open source licensing off-topic. There is a subset (that we must define in a clear way) of questions that are on-topic on both Programmers and Open Source. However, we should update our Help Center to link to Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendation (specifically their /help/on-topic pages) to help ...
9
First and foremost, I think the arguments presented in this former answer to a question asked by Thomas Owens if we should continue to accept licensing questions last year are still valid. So I don't think we should make all licensing questions off-topic, even in the presence of "Open Source.SE" and "Law.SE".
If questions have the low quality you described, ...
8
Personally I don't think it would work.
There is simply too much discussion around these topics and ultimately you'll just end up with a big list of answers each extolling the virtues of a language or a book but not really addressing the question.
We have found that these questions don't work with the Stack Exchange question and answer format.
However, if ...
8
I would be very much in favour of completely dropping licensing from our scope.
While legal aspects certainly are a part of software engineering, we could only answer the most simple questions here. And anecdotally, most questions are not so simple. Even “simple” questions about open source licenses sometimes have thorny edge cases, making answers here most ...
7
Askers yield
As a prolific answerer, you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.
For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand:
...we’re determined to keep question quality high, even at the cost of refusing a little sand. ...
6
I think the closure of this question is correct. Not that the question itself is bad, but I think it does not pass the test: "Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?"
Rephrasing your question to a non-programmer one:
"As a soon-to-be-grad, will my skills and/or career suffer if I join a startup where I'll ...
6
I'm strongly against this. I think the concept of 'canonical question' altogether won't work, it'll send the message that the topic is relevant and appropriate to ask questions regarding to the many new visitors who won't know better, further as you pointed out the answers wouldn't work for most, therefore many would think "This is on topic, but this Q doesn'...
6
I think you should consider adopting one of Stack Overflow's custom reasons:
Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.
This is (sort of) covered under Too Broad, ...
6
You weren't rude, which is the only criteria for anything "Summer of Love" related, so no you didn't do anything wrong there. Personally I don't think you did anything wrong at all, though an optional addendum explaining how the question could be improved would be even more helpful.
And frankly, discouraging you from trying to improve questions and the site,...
6
Assuming that this doesn't happen frequent enough to warrant changes to the system, one approach that comes to mind is to flag these cases for moderator attention.
Flag message explaining the issue could refer this very question, in order to make it easier for moderator to find more details, eg like as follows:
please take a look - this off-topic question ...
6
No. A list is a list and the same rules apply. We don't do lists here and we also don't do basic research that can be solved by simply reading a document page. We solve problems.
6
The topic of software performance testing is on-topic - it's part of "quality assurance and testing". However, please consult our guidance on questions about where to start to avoid your question being unclear or too broad. You should do some initial research on your own, and then come back with one or more specific questions or concerns.
5
This sounds like a "which technology is better" question, which are called out in the FAQ as a type of question that is not appropriate for Programmers.
5
If what you have in mind is a kind of architecture / design review question, then technically, those questions would be a bit "too localized"1. However, we do have a sister site dedicated to code reviews, and it's doing just fine. I don't see why we couldn't at least try to find a way to make architecture / design reviews work on Programmers.
I'd say... ...
5
FAQs and such rarely if ever work. People just don't read them.
So making the FAQ clearer isn't going to do much if anything.
What does help is ensuring that previous questions closed as off-topic aren't found by Google. As is, people do a search, find a hundred links to questions with their topic on here, all of them closed and unanswered, and they just ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
