[eridius]

For Pete's sake, at least 568 people upvoted the question, and at least 1004 people upvoted the first answer alone.

The community has spoken - they see this as valuable content.

Popular is not necessarily the same thing as valuable. This is a problem that reddit's been hitting a lot lately (e.g. image macro posts everywhere). The most easily-digested simple things get lots of upvotes because everybody can relate, or at least understand. The more complex, useful answers to more specific problems get a lot less attention because a lot fewer people can recognize the value, or even understand the question.

I have to agree with Jeff Atwood, these types of discussion questions shouldn't be on SO. They're just fluff questions that drown out the important work of solving actual problems.

[coolgeek]

Popular is not necessarily the same thing as valuable

Fair enough, but we're not talking about "Why does Vista suck?"

Maybe he chose the wrong example to make his point. But the only other example he chose was Python vs Perl, for which he cited his own blog post in which he hyperbolically characterized that question as "Sharks vs Gorillas".

That's not a rational argument. That's refusing to reconsider your position and engaging in fallacies to justify your position.

They're just fluff questions that drown out the important work of solving actual problems.

Like. maybe, avoiding database development mistakes made by application developers?

[eridius]

I'm not sure what your point is. What's the fallacy? I haven't seen any examples of this sort of discussion question that are good arguments for allowing them on SO.

Like. maybe, avoiding database development mistakes made by application developers?

Nobody's saying don't post that information. Just, don't post it on Stack Overflow. There's plenty of other places to post long-form pieces about general discussion questions. The best of which is probably a blog. If I want to avoid database development mistakes I can google for that question pretty easily. I don't need to go trawling through Stack Overflow to find that sort of generic advice, and I don't need to drown out other people's legitimate questions with my own fluff question asking for a rehash of widely-known database development practices which I could have found elsewhere.