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I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met and may have absolutely nothing in common with. I'm certainly not. Indeed, there's a decent chance that leaving a post like this around could end up just making things worse.
...
33
Has SO become the trash dump of Programmers?
The specific question certainly isn't... stellar, but you are over-reacting. In fact, of the 258 questions we've migrated to SO (in the last 90 days), only 13% have been rejected. Conversely, the numbers aren't as good the other way around. We've rejected 16% of the questions SO has send us (but you don't see us ...
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The questions which are most welcome here are those which come from real software projects, related to real problems which arise inside the project. It does not matter if it is a commercial project, or a hobby project, or if the topic of the project is very specialized, as long as it is an answerable, on-topic question with a reasonable focus.
Opposed to ...
30
Thus, questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.
By and large this is true, but do you ever stop long enough to consider if there is actually some pretty good content behind a long-standing question — content that didn't become a never-ending list of answers or break down into a needless, ...
23
Of your 9 non-deleted questions, all of them have a net positive score and none of them are closed. Two of them are also marked as a favorite question by at least 1 person, with one being marked as a favorite by 3 people. Most of the questions have a solid view count - the lowest one (and also the most recent) has 50 views, and several have over 150 views.
...
19
To me, it seems like this is a very simple "please find me my information" request. It's best suited for a search engine. In fact, you don't even need one. From the Wake homepage, click on the "View on GitHub" link to go to the project's GitHub page. From there, you can click on the user's name to go to the creator's profile, which links to the Wake website ...
17
The question had 257 up-votes; it was viewed 16 thousand times, and had some highly-upvoted answers (and one was accepted). I didn't see and recent discussions or policy decisions that might have changed the status of this post, but 2-1/2 years later, five people closed this rather suddenly as too broad.
We get periodic notices when popular questions are ...
16
After 12 up / 0 down votes to this answer and no answers expressing a problem, I applied a historical lock to both questions. This should make it clear that these questions aren't acceptable here anymore, but won't break anything that may be linking to them.
I also cleaned up the answers to both questions.
I don't think deletion is appropriate, but I'm ...
15
Another option would be to add your update as an answer, as it's somewhat of a solution to the problem you had a year ago. Right now your update wouldn't really stand as an answer, but if you feel like expanding it a bit with details of the process the company followed, and adding a couple of references (perhaps to the other answers that helped you the most),...
14
Something came up in the comments on Robert's answer that I'd like to address...
But why should it remain open? Curation of existing content for questions that are off topic, primarily opinion, or too broad is most easily done when the question is closed.
-- MichaelT
Closure doesn't mean deletion, and I think many community participants confuse the ...
13
Ultimately all Stack Exchange sites where professional matters are discussed (Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Webmasters, Game Development, here) exist because people are having trouble with an aspect of their job.
Some people will post a question hoping for a complete solution, others will be happy with a pointer in the right direction. Here on Programmers ...
13
When I encounter a post with some grammar issues, I first make some edits myself to try and improve it. If there are parts I'm not sure about, I'll leave them and then leave a comment asking the op to consider making an edit to clarify further.
This not only leads by example but also gives the op a demonstrated place to start. In this case, I'm not entirely ...
13
If you read the Help Center's page about what you can ask about here prior to posting, you would see that some questions aren't a good fit for this environment, specifically questions about "finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers, tutorials, articles, or blogs" or "...
12
I think your question is definitely on topic so I've reopened it. Sometimes we (the community) get things wrong, so bringing it up here is the right thing to do.
Watch me get down voted on this one though.
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I see no reason to do anything about it.
11
The question was rightfully closed.
It is composed of several different questions that are:
Vague
Not answerable
Speculative
These are all not good attributes for a question on the Stack Exchange site.
In particular they are of the Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site as the FAQ discusses.
10
There is a far cry different from the question about an existing system, its faults and the best way to design a better solution, vs. PLZZZ TEH CODEZ!
The question cited above clearly described the issue.
The OP didn't get too localized
While potentially broad, the question narrowed the focus a bit by describing what he had already tried.
The OP put in some ...
10
I think not, but it was originally closed as a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak but reopened by 5 members of the community.
I am inclined to agree with you that it's not a good question - despite, or perhaps because of, it's length. However, I ...
10
First of all, thank you for not cross posting on The Workplace. I've written a rant recently on how to get a question migrated there, the gist of it is:
Flag for moderation attention, or
Drop the questions in the Water Cooler, the Workplace's main chat room.
For the question in question I'd go with option 2, asking in the Water Cooler. It's a bit ...
10
I think that it is important to get feedback on how the answers applied and if they helped out. It is good to know if the answers are not just voted up and accepted, but that they made a difference for the questor in the real world. This information may be localized and perhaps useless to most people however.
If you are just chatting then it best belongs ...
10
It's a very interesting question, but it lacks what essentially separates Programmers (and Stack Exchange in general) from traditional discussion forums: An actual problem looking for a solution.
This, unfortunately, is not something we can overlook, it's a policy engraved in all Stack Exchange FAQs and (at least for the techonology / science sites of the ...
10
Close voters at Programmers would better memorize the criteria for debugging questions to be acceptable for Stack Overflow:
Questions seeking debugging help ("why isn't this code working?") must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear ...
10
I can appreciate the idea that sometimes popular questions can get closed simply because they are crazy popular. However, I strongly doubt this is an issue that would need to be addressed immediately.
If a highly upvoted question suddenly gets closed, to a point where it triggers red flags in the Community Manager system, the right thing for the Community ...
9
My response is going to come in two (and a half) parts.
Part 1
I agree with your take on the question and have reopened it.
Part 2
I asked a similar question ("What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?") last year and one of the responses summed it up:
The principle is that moderators are encouraged to make decisions; that's ...
9
Everyone and their mother (and their dog and their robot dog and that dog's AI subroutines and their subroutines and their subroutines and their circuits and their atoms) has a favorite programming language. My answer to the question would be HTML 5 and Javascript but others will disagree and most of the answers would be equally valid.
People are forever ...
9
I believe you are referring to this question.
Programmers is not a forum for the discussion of new ideas. This is a question and answer site, designed for people who are facing a current problem or dilemma to get the answer to their problem from experts in the field of software development.
What you posted was not a question at all - there was nothing to ...
9
The close notification for "not constructive" reads:
This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.
There are:
6 answers, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
