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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
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 ...
10
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 ...
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 ...
8
First and foremost, I think the arguments presented in this former answer to a question asked by Thomas Owens from 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, we already have the ...
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
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
The list of topics for each site should be on /help/on-topic.
Questions asking which site to ask on are on-topic for the Meta sites. If you think your question might be on-topic for XX.SE, you should ask in meta.XX.SE if you are right in your assessment.
If you don't have a clue which site to ask on, ask for a site recommendation at meta.SE.
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 ...
5
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, ...
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
The Help Center has all the information that you need. Specifically, check out these pages:
What topics can I ask about here?
What types of questions should I avoid asking?
How do I ask a good question?
If you aren't sure if your question is on-topic or if you need help to narrow down the scope or make other improvements, you can always ask here on Meta or ...
5
I'm jimsug, a mod from Law. You may remember me from the comment on the question above :)
Personally, I'm fine with migrations from Programmers, and happy to work with you to give questions that would be on-topic for law and otherwise closed here a good home.
Firstly, I'm glad that a couple of people have pointed out that legal advice is off-topic for Law ...
5
This site is intended for questions that fit within the field of software engineering, in particular software engineering concepts and design-level questions.
This site is not intended for questions about the life of programmers. A question does not become on topic just because it is specific to software engineers, that's part of why this site was renamed ...
5
This site is about software engineering the topic, not programmers the persons.
A small subset of your questions may be on topic here, in particular regarding development processes and tooling. Software engineering includes some project management topics as well.
However, other parts of your questions are clearly out of scope. For example, hiring, personal ...
4
First off, do a little sanity-check: are you sure the question is off-topic? If it's about cats, then that's an easy check; otherwise, review the faq.
Next, do another sanity-check: is it spam? Is it someone trolling for attention? There are specific flags for "spam" and "it is not welcome in our community" that are a heck of a lot more effective than ...
4
This question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202875/which-technologies-will-most-affect-financial-services-over-the-next-decade
just made me remember another good reason we constantly close stuff, folks asking for a technical crystal ball.
This question is asking for pure speculation, of which no one can be provably correct, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
