[grouseway]

>Instead of putting all the Java programmers in one little forum and all the C++ programmers in another, we dumped everyone together and just let them tag their questions

And yet for some reason the site can't handle off-topic and pure "answerable by fact" questions on one site? So often I search for something and the top post is an closed off-topic post on SO. I've never even had one of my own SO questions closed as off-topic so it's not a personal grudge - I just think the site is very stubborn about this. So many questions and organic search results is a huge signal that they are ignoring.

It's not like they're running a forum were the first page would be polluted with off topic stuff if they allowed it. Their fear of becoming yahoo Q&A has prevented them from filling a need that is there. Often I just want to people's opinions on stuff - that's mostly why I read HN.