[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.