[angersock]

I'll flat-out disagree with you about the opinion-based questions.

We're in a young-enough industry and practice that opinions are really the coin of the realm--there is not the same standard accept methodology you'd see in, say, mechanical engineering.

To pretend that opinions aren't somehow a useful component of learning here is absurd--all the more so because beginners need opinions to start. Once they learn more, once they get exposed to other ideas, then they can form their own opinions. But to pretend that this happens in a vacuum is quite wrong.

Your example "Which is better, Ruby or PHP?" is exactly where opinions, properly backed-up, are useful: a good answer will say "Well, Ruby has these great metaprogramming features, but PHP has a much larger developer pool, and so on". Bad answers will of course just be "ruby is teh 1337 n00b". If only there was some kind of way that Stack Overflow let users filter good answers from bad answers...

At the end of the day, opinions and their debate are what are most useful to a beginner, especially when they don't know what questions to ask or issues to consider. The big failing right now is that you aren't trusting your community enough to filter out the garbage.

[andrewflnr]

No one is saying that opinions aren't important. What they're saying is that their place isn't StackOverflow. Why do people find this so hard to understand? Just because SO/SE is big doesn't obligate them to become big enough to encompass all the useful questions in their domain. Let them do their thing.

[fragmede]

Well, when your site is titled "Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers.", people, professional and hobbyists alike, tend to think they can questions. (The nerve of those people...)

[jackmaney]

Q&A and discussions are not the same.

[joelthelion]

> No one is saying that opinions aren't important. What they're saying is that their place isn't StackOverflow

And that's where you wrong, they would fit perfectly if you made an effort to accommodate them instead of being dogmatic about them.

[thedufer]

If SO decides that SO isn't the place for opinions, then they're right. It's their site. I don't see why this is such a difficult concept.

[joelthelion]

It's not a difficult concept, it's just a stupid viewpoint.

Just because they can legally ignore user feedback doesn't mean that they should.

[thedufer]

If it's such a stupid viewpoint, then why aren't they being ousted by Q&A sites that don't hold that viewpoint? It's not like this is something they haven't heard before - people have been making the same complaint since day 1.

[jackmaney]

Again: if you want to start your own Q&A site that invites discussions, then feel free. No one will stop you.

[jackmaney]

I say the following in all seriousness and with no sarcasm: Feel free to create your own Q&A site that invites discussion. If it becomes more useful than Quora or Yahoo! Answers, please let me know.

[angersock]

It's a site with questions and answers.

In our field, again, there are a great many questions which seem to only be matters of opinion--and that's okay! That's fine! That's how people work, and to pretend otherwise is foolish.

Many architectural decisions in computing are heuristic, right? Many solutions are the result of opinion, because nearly everybody outside of hard-core mathematicians and computer scientists lacks the language to even describe their problems in such a way as to avoid opinion. Even the folks that do have that ability are likely working on a problem where the assumptions are incomplete and ill-defined anyway.

This is a faulty binning of questions into "is question about opinion" and "is question that is not matter of opinion". I posit that the former bin is quite useful and shouldn't be worked against.

[andrewflnr]

You're still fighting a strawman. No one is pretending anything. Let me say it one more time: SO/SE is not obligated to accommodate all useful questions in their domain. They made their choice. Let them do their thing. But stop whining. Just stop.

In the "but, questions and answers!" vein, it's the "answer" part that's important. I believe they've come out and said they only want to handle questions that have one single answer, in full knowledge there are many questions that don't fit in that mold.

Architectural decisions are a red herring: they don't want to answer heuristic-driven architecture questions. That's not in their scope.

No one's saying those questions aren't useful. They're only saying that SO is not the place for them. This is not complicated. As a programmer, avoiding feature creep is something you almost certainly already understand. It's basically the same.

[amenod]

I hate this answer, and it crops up in many places in this discussion and on SO/SE. What you are basically saying is "it's their game and you can follow these rules or go away". Sure, it's their game... and it's a shame many of the best players hang around their playground, otherwise I would depart in a split second. And the moment another alternative shows up, I will. Until then I will just take what I can and give back... well, less than I would if the rules were more sensible. And I will whine. :)

Disclosure: they have closed a few of my answers that I actually went to some length to make good - but apparently "which library" type of questions are not appropriate for a programming Q&A site?!? Go figure.

[jackmaney]

> "it's their game and you can follow these rules or go away"

Exactly.

Also, answers (by themselves) cannot be closed, only questions can be closed.

[DanBC]

> I'll flat-out disagree with you about the opinion-based questions.

There's nothing stopping you from setting up your own opinion-only SE clone.

[angersock]

C'mon. I'm launching a product soon and am very hard-pressed for spare cycles for project development.

Your observation is a perfect example of a fact which is not an answer.

[DanBC]

Stack Exchange is not going to provide you with what you want. You can ask 'til you're blue in the face, but they're pretty clear about what they do and don't want.

So why keep asking?

You'll get better results creating it yourself, or persuading someone else to create it.